


'Til We Have Built Jerusalem

by PR Zed (przed)



Series: Babylon Is Fallen [2]
Category: Take That, The Professionals
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-10
Updated: 2012-10-10
Packaged: 2017-11-16 00:34:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/przed/pseuds/PR%20Zed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After London and most of England were lost to a zombie plague, Bodie, Doyle and a small band of survivors found refuge in a Scottish castle. But when one of the survivors, a virus expert, develops what seems to be a vaccine for the Rage virus, Bodie and Doyle find themselves caught up in another race for survival. A sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/163256">Babylon is Fallen</a>, and a Take That RPF crossover, set in the 28 Days Later universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Til We Have Built Jerusalem

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for death of significant minor character.

  


I will not cease from Mental Fight,  
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:  
'Til we have built Jerusalem,  
In England's green & pleasant Land  
\--William Blake

With the sun setting behind him, Doyle stood on top of Dumbarton Rock, cast his eyes to the town below and looked for movement in the lengthening shadows below. It had been three days since there'd been any sign of the infected in Dumbarton, and he still wasn't sure if that was a sign of progress. Did it mean there were fewer infected about, or that the infected there were cunning enough to remain hidden? Given what they'd all been through, he couldn't help but fear that the last few days were simply the quiet before the storm. _But what if it's not?_ a tiny voice of hope whispered to him. What if it was all over? What if things could go back to normal? Though it would be a radically different version of normal. 

"You're not up here brooding again, are you?"

Doyle jumped at Bodie's voice. He'd been so focused on what was in front of him, he'd forgotten to pay attention to what was behind.

"Nervy?" Bodie asked, even as he put his arms around Doyle.

"No more than usual," Doyle said, and leaned into the solidity of his partner's body. It might have been the only positive feature of the plague, but they'd found quite quickly that no one gave a rat's arse that they were sleeping together, just as long as they were good at protecting the castle, at killing the infected. "Just wanted to make sure all's quiet down there."

"It's quiet enough." Bodie peeked over his shoulder. "Even Cowley has looked more relaxed the last few days."

"Now you're just imagining things." Doyle laughed. "The Cow's never relaxed."

"I didn't say relaxed. I said _more_ relaxed. Meaning not quite as tense."

"Pedant."

"Whinger."

"Whinger?" Doyle turned inside Bodie's arms to face his partner, meaning to show him just how much he could whinge, but Bodie surprised him with a kiss and tightened his arms around him.

Doyle immediately opened his mouth, concentrating on the heat of Bodie's mouth, his breath, on the feel of Bodie's hands, one at his back and one clutching at his still too short hair.

He'd never felt more alive.

It was fucking ridiculous. It was the end of the world, and all he wanted to do was to crawl in bed with Bodie for a week and forget about all their responsibilities. _It's not that ridiculous_ , he could imagine Bodie saying. He'd always loved his comforts, Bodie had.

But end of the world or not, they'd neither of them ever shirk the job at hand. So even though Doyle would have liked nothing more than to drag Bodie off to the Magazine, the old weapons storehouse they'd taken over for themselves, and have his way with him, he gave Bodie a final kiss, then reluctantly pulled away.

"We should go down to the Governor's House," he said. "Dinner will be on, and the rumour is Cowley has some grand announcement."

"I suppose." Bodie looked disappointed. "I don't suppose you have any idea what this announcement is going to be?" 

"No more than you." Doyle pushed Bodie towards the steep path down to the main building of the castle and fell in beside him. "He's been spending a lot of time talking to Grace, though." He thought back to yesterday, when he'd entered Cowley's office to report on another patrol of the area with no infected spotted and had found their boss and their resident virus expert deep in some debate. But he hadn't heard anything that made sense to him, and Grace Edwards had excused herself when she'd seen Doyle, so he had no idea what they'd been talking about.

"Maybe she's found a cure." Bodie gave him a hopeful look.

"She didn't look like a woman who's discovered the cure for the Rage virus." If anything, she'd looked deeply upset as she left Cowley's office.

"Maybe they're just going to reduce our rations again." Bodie pursed his lips in distaste. He saw the sense of their need to ration the food they had to get through the coming winter, Doyle knew, but Bodie was always one to appreciate his creature comforts.

"It'll keep you nice and trim." Doyle patted Bodie's tummy and gave him a wink.

"I'm quite trim enough, I'll have you know." He gave Doyle a look of affront that seemed to be only half put on. "I'll be wasting away if I have to cut down any further."

"Don't worry, I'll always be able to find you."

"Some comfort that'll be if I don't have the strength to do anything with you."

"And you called me a whinger." Doyle laughed. "C'mon, I'll race you down the hill. If you win, I'll give you my pudding."

Another laugh, and they were off, running down the steep hill, past the Magazine, under the Guard House that spanned the stairs to the Governor's House. That great building housed most of their numbers, and also held the Great Hall where everyone took their meals. Doyle had the lead until the end, when Bodie finally pulled ahead of him and touched the great wooden door of the Governor's House in triumph.

"The winner!" Bodie crowed. "I hope you weren't looking forward to your pudding."

Doyle was about to launch a scathing comment about Bodie and his unnatural affection for pudding, when the door to the Governor's House burst open and a chattering group of the castle's children spilled out.

They were a motley lot--the youngest wasn't more than five, and the oldest was fifteen--but they all stuck together, they all looked after each other. Which was for the best, really. Every one of them had lost someone they loved. More than a few were the only surviving member of their family. Some had arrived at the castle with a group of adults. Some had been found on their own by a patrol. However they'd arrived, they were, each and every one, older than their years. Cowley had set up a school for them, with different adults taking turns teaching both the usual school subjects and the life skills this new world called for. Bodie still hadn't got used to seeing ten-year-old girls squeezing off rounds on their makeshift shooting range, but Doyle was more than happy to help out with their weapons training.

Lily, Grace Edward's niece, had become one of their ringleaders, and she was the one who nearly tumbled into Doyle now.

"Sorry, Mr Doyle," she said as three other girls her age milled around behind her and the others joined in a spontaneous game of tag. Lily's three friends stared at the two men, giggling.

"Don't worry about it," Doyle said, even as he glanced back at his partner, enjoying the discomfited look on Bodie's face. Doyle still wasn't sure what bothered Bodie more: seeing kids running around what still was essentially a war zone, or been ogled by just barely adolescent girls. "Where are you lot off to? It's nearly time for dinner, isn't it?"

"We've all had our meal early. I've got radio duty," Lily said. There was a radio set up in the Guard House. That was where they broadcast the recording of Cowley's message to other survivors from, twenty-four hours a day. There was always someone manning the receiver there too, listening for broadcasts from other survivors. The kids and their young ears were particularly good at picking voices out of the static. They'd found more than one group of people that way. "Bobby said he heard a voice on his shift this afternoon, said it sounded Mancunian. Sheryl and Leslie are from Manchester so they wanted to come and listen. They're hoping it's someone they know."

"What about the rest of them?" Doyle nodded at the gaggle of kids surrounding Sheryl and Leslie, even as he calculated the astronomical odds of the two girls knowing the owner of that possibly Mancunian voice. Then again, the odds of him and Bodie finding each other again had been pretty fucking astronomical too, and look at them.

"They just want to come for fun."

"Right, off you go, then." Doyle shooed the kids on their way, and he could see Bodie's shoulder sag with relief. "Sometimes I think you'd rather face the infected than those kids."

"Sometimes I would," Bodie said with a shrug, then patted Doyle's arse as they entered the Great Hall. "C'mon. Let's go see what the Cow and Grace have planned for us."

Cowley sat at the head table in the Great Hall, feeling like nothing so much as the headmaster of a particularly unruly school as he watched his people, all of his people, CI5 and soldiers and civilians, talk and laugh and wait in line for the food laid out at the side of the room.

He glanced to his side and looked at Doctor Edwards as she waited for everyone to get their food and take their seats. Grace was looking as worried as he'd ever seen her. She constantly bit her lip and rubbed her thumb against forefinger. He couldn't blame her, but he needed her to seem more confident at the moment, whether she felt it or not. They were about to ask for a great sacrifice from some of these people. They had to show that it was the right thing to do.

Cowley saw movement at the back of the hall and watched as Bodie and Doyle slipped into the room and fell into the food line with some of the more senior surviving CI5 operatives. At least he could depend on those two to remain calm no matter what the circumstances.

When the last person had taken their seat, Cowley rose to his feet and waited for the tumult to calm. He didn't have to wait long.

"Some of you may have heard rumours that there's to be an announcement tonight." There was an increased buzz in the room and Cowley could see curious eyes turn towards both him and Grace. "You've heard correctly. We do have some news. I'm going to ask Doctor Edwards to share it with you, since it comes from her team."

Grace stood beside him silently for a long moment as a steady hum rose in the room. Just as the hum threatened to break into a riot, and as Cowley thought he was going to either have to make the announcement himself or give Grace a nudge, she began to speak.

"You all know that we've been working on a vaccine for the virus. A way of stopping the disease before it starts in a healthy person." She took a big breath. "We think we've found that vaccine."

The room exploded, as Cowley had known it would. Everyone had been hoping Grace would find a vaccine, the first step towards a cure for this horrific disease. And now she'd done it. There were whoops and cheers and excited people slapping each other on the back.

Cowley looked back to Grace, but she still didn't seem to share the excitement of everyone else. She was still biting her lip, and her hand was still moving nervously. Cowley held up his hand to get everyone's attention again, so Grace could tell them the next part of her news. The part that wasn't entirely positive.

The clamour settled only when Doyle took it upon himself to let out a piercing whistle from where he sat, then gave Cowley a nod. Cowley gestured to Grace to continue.

"I said I _think_ we've found the vaccine. We think we've attenuated the virus enough that it won't cause infection. We think it will grant immunity. But we don't know for sure. At this point we would usually do animal trials, but we don't have any primates to do the trials on, and we don't have the time to do those trials.

"We're going to move straight to a human trial."

The last murmur arising from the room stopped cold with Grace's last words as those in the room contemplated what she was saying.

"And to do that, we need to ask for volunteers."

Arms started to shoot up, but Grace held her own hands out, asking wordlessly for calm.

"Before any of you volunteer, I want you to know the risks. We might have miscalculated. The vaccine might still cause infection. Or it might not work. Or it might have a side effect we haven't even considered. So you need to consider carefully if you want to volunteer."

"We are only going to ask for ten subjects to start. We'd like a mix of men and women, and we'd like to draw from those who regularly go out on patrols, who might come in contact with the infected."

Grace stopped and took a breath and looked out at the members of their community, the people who were looking to her for their salvation. Cowley could see her hand shaking slightly, but she was otherwise standing firm and tall. _Good girl_ , he thought to himself, proud of her and all the people in this room, all of them survivors.

"I want you to think about this," Grace continued. "Think very hard about what it might mean if things go wrong, if this vaccine isn't what we're hoping for. But also what it means if it is. Take a minute to talk to your friends, to any family you have here. And then if you're absolutely sure you want to volunteer, please come up to the front."

People began to talk all at once. Some were excited, others thoughtful. Some seemed fearful, others determined.

And then the volunteers began to file to the front.

Murphy was the first to come up, Cowley wasn't at all surprised to see. He'd lost his mother and the rest of his family in Wimbledon, and he wanted to see an end to the virus as much as anyone. The next person up was Scott Polson. Polson had been a junior constable in Glasgow when the Rage virus hit, and had kept a small group of survivors alive until Murphy and a patrol had stumbled upon them last month. He'd followed Murphy around like a duckling ever since. Then came Judith Rees-Smith, a middle-aged, horse-mad member of a minor aristocratic house who was a dead shot with a rifle. She'd proven a definite asset both on patrols and in dealing with the small herd of horses Cowley had accumulated in preparation for when they used up the last of their carefully guarded petrol.

Lake stood up next, making his dead-eyed way up to the front. He'd never been the same after Williams' death, and the Rage plague had only seemed to accelerate his slide into the sort of shell shock Cowley had seen far too often during the war. Bennie followed behind him, Bennie whose outstanding skill had always been blending into the underground rather than fighting. These days, he spent more time in the radio room than out on patrols, so it was interesting that he'd volunteered for a task that would see him sent out more. Sally followed him, another CI5 agent, and one of his people who'd seemed the least changed by the apocalypse they found themselves in.

The next three people up were more civilians. Lynn Fletcher had been a physical education teacher in a modern comprehensive near Loch Lomond. She liked to say that handling a pack of infected was nothing compared to working with a bunch of teenaged girls. Keith Sinclair was a local farmer, who'd managed to survive barricaded on his property with his two sons. Cowley had hopes that Sinclair and his sons, strapping young men in their late teens, would be key to helping them rebuild when the plague was done. Then there was Audrey Logan, a deceptively small woman who had been the only resident of her village to survive the plague. She was surprisingly tough, and her strength and cool head had got more than one of their patrols home safely when things had gone wrong.

The very last person to come to the front was Bodie. Cowley had had his eye on Bodie and Doyle from the moment Grace made her announcement. Bodie seemed excited by the news, but Cowley wasn't so sure about Doyle. After Grace finished her call for volunteers, the two of them put their heads together, creating a small pocket of privacy in the tumult of the Great Hall. Cowley knew he would never be privy to the discussion they had, but at the end they hugged, and pulled apart, and then Bodie made his way to the front of the room with the other nine volunteers as Doyle looked on, his brows knitted slightly together.

Cowley looked at the ten of them, the men and women, some CI5, some not, all of them brave, all of them willing to risk everything for the greater good. He held up a hand again to regain the attention of the room.

"I want to thank you all," he said. "But most especially I want to thank our volunteers. I won't blather on about how important it is that we end this plague. We all understand that. And these men and women will be getting us that much closer to the solution. Thank you."

He wasn't at all surprised when the room erupted in spontaneous cheering, or that when Grace turned to him, she had tears in her eyes.

Bodie lay in the bed he shared with Doyle, his head propped up on one arm, and watched his partner shed his clothes. Doyle had his naked back to him, and was taking more care than usual, folding each piece of clothing carefully when he so often threw them in a pile at his feet. It was almost as if he were reluctant to face Bodie.

"C'mon, Sunshine," he said to Doyle. "I can't wait all night." He felt like he could barely wait another minute for Doyle, felt like his skin was about to burst into flame from the mounting desire to hold Doyle in his arms. And they wouldn't be able to take advantage of their privacy for long. The Governor's House was full to bursting, and they'd started using the old French Prison building to house people as well. Only the many steep stairs leading up to the Magazine had kept others out of their private refuge, and those stairs wouldn't keep out those looking for a less crowded place to kip out for long. 

Doyle put down his trousers, smoothed them with an outstretched hand, and then finally turned to face him. He had a slight smile on his face, but Bodie could see a certain sadness lurking at the corners of his mouth, in the depths of his eyes.

He threw back the covers on their bed, nothing more than a glorified camp bed, but more luxury than some of those bunking down in the Governor's House had, and scooted back to make room for Doyle. Without a word, Doyle slid in beside him, and he quickly covered them both and then moved to hold him tightly. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the feel of Doyle's skin against his, the way their chests lined up, the way Doyle's leg hitched over his, drawing them closer together, the way Doyle's cock stirred against his.

Moaning slightly, he dropped a kiss onto Doyle's exposed neck, wanting nothing more than to crush Doyle against him. But there was unfinished business here. Things they needed to talk about.

"What's wrong?" he asked, deciding the direct route was better than the triple think Doyle could get up to when left to his own devices.

"Nothing." Doyle shook his head and buried his face in the crook of Bodie's neck.

"Don't give me that." Bodie pushed him slightly away and looked him in the eye. "You've been quiet all evening." As soon as he'd heard Grace's announcement, Bodie had known that he wanted to volunteer. He'd looked over at Doyle, expecting to see the same excitement on his face that he felt himself. Instead Doyle's expression had shut down completely.

He'd put his forehead against Doyle's, and put a steadying hand on his shoulder.

"I want to volunteer," he'd said.

"Of course you do," Doyle had replied. "Big daft hero like you, you can't help yourself, can you?"

"You okay with that?"

There had been a long pause at that, a pause when Doyle stared at him carefully, and then finally blinked and nodded.

"Yeah, go on then. You'll be no use to anyone if I don't let you play."

And then he'd hugged Bodie, hard, and sent him up to the front with a good natured cuff to the head.

The rest of the evening had evolved into a spontaneous party, and Bodie hadn't thought much about Doyle's reaction to his decision. He'd been too busy consuming shots from the secret stashes of alcohol that had been broken out, and drinking multiple toasts to both Grace and his fellow volunteers. He could still feel the alcohol in his system now, a pleasant glow flushing his face and chest. In the dim light he could see Doyle's face bore a similar glow, though he realized now that he'd barely touched a drop all evening.

"C'mon, Doyle," he urged. "Tell me what's going on in that woolly head of yours."

"You'll think I'm soft."

"I think that anyway." If the bastard was going to mope, perhaps he could be teased into a better mood.

"It's not a joke, Bodie." He heard it then, that slight cracking of his voice Doyle developed when his emotions were running high, when he was upset but too proud to admit it openly. He knew then that teasing him into a better mood wasn't an option. 

"I know, Ray." He squeezed Doyle's shoulders just a little harder, putting everything he felt for this man into the contact. "Now, why don't you tell me what you're thinking." 

"I'm afraid of losing you."

Bodie couldn't help it. He laughed. One uncontrolled bray of laughter that he quickly brought under control, but too late to stop the look of hurt from showing in Doyle's eyes.

"It's not funny." Doyle broke free of his hold and hit him on the shoulder hard enough to make him wince.

"I'm sorry, but it is a bit."

"It's not." His partner sounded like nothing so much as a petulant teenager, and that only made it harder for Bodie to keep the grin from his face.

"Doyle, you daft bastard. I'm more likely to be killed by an infected on patrol than by Grace's bloody needle."

"Don't you fucking say that." It was the tone of Doyle's voice that made Bodie stop, that sucked all the humour right out of the room. That tone was full of desperation and despair.

They hadn't talked much about the time they'd spent apart, with Bodie thinking Doyle was dead, and Doyle clinging to what must have seemed a mad hope that Bodie was alive. But Bodie was pulled back to it now, was forced to remember the absolute misery of those weeks. It was no time for joking.

"Do you want me to pull out of the trial?" He would. As important as he knew it to be, he'd turn down the privilege of being one of Grace's experimental rats if it was a choice Doyle couldn't live with.

Doyle slowly shook his head.

"You can't." He sat up and pulled his knees to his chest. "It needs to be done, we both know it. And if you pull out, who's to say that others won't as well. The vaccine needs to be tested."

"But…" Bodie prompted. He sat up beside Doyle and pulled his partner into his arms. It was a mark of how miserable he was that Doyle didn't resist him at all.

"But it doesn't mean I'm not worried." Doyle picked at the covers with one hand, and his voice became even more strained. "What if you turn, Bodie?"

Bodie sucked in a deep breath. This was the one unspoken horror of the trial, that the vaccine would end up being the virus in disguise. But that had been their job as CI5 agents, to confront the horror others avoided. It was so much more important now that they face the realities, face everything that could go horribly wrong.

"If I turn, Doyle, you have to kill me."

Doyle immediately stiffened in his arms, and looked up at him sharply. Even in the dim light of the Magazine, Bodie could see the revulsion in Doyle's eyes. But Doyle didn't shy away from this unspeakable thing; he simply held Bodie's gaze and gave a brief nod.

"I will," he whispered. "I'll fucking hate it, but I'll do it."

"Thank you." Bodie's voice was as low as Doyle's, but just as fierce. He tightened his hold on Doyle, held him with all his strength, with everything he felt for him. Doyle drew in a sharp breath and turned in his arms. Before Bodie knew it he'd been knocked flat onto their camp bed and Doyle was kissing him, biting him, pinning him flat. Bodie nearly fought back, nearly worked to turn the tables on Doyle, to pin him in turn to their bed, but then he looked at Doyle, at the need in his eyes, and stopped himself. Doyle needed this, and Bodie would give him all he could.

His breath harsh in his throat, Bodie tipped his head back, baring his throat to Doyle. He hissed as Doyle bit his way down the side of his throat, nipping at his collarbone before turning his attention to Bodie's nipples. He moaned as Doyle's tongue licked ribs and hipbone. He whimpered as Doyle hovered above him, his breath hot on Bodie's hard cock.

"Bastard," Bodie said as Doyle held him down by the hips, but brought his lips no closer to his cock. Doyle said nothing in return, just looked at him with an expression that showed so much that Bodie nearly looked away. Nearly, but didn't. As much as anything else, he was here to bear witness, to acknowledge this thing between them, so strong and yet so fragile.

Doyle looked at him like that for long seconds, his breath as harsh as Bodie's own. And then he closed his eyes, breaking the spell, then leaned down and licked Bodie's cock from root to tip. Slowly.

"Fuck." Bodie wasn't sure if he whispered the word, or shouted it, he only knew that he felt as if his nerves had all been set alight. And that feeling grew as Doyle took Bodie's whole cock in his mouth. Slowly. Carefully. Tenderly. He bucked his hips, wanting more, but in response Doyle took firm hold of his hips and stilled any more movement. 

Bodie breathed deep and tried to relax, tried to let the pleasure wash over him, tried to make it last, but it was too much. He threw his head back as Doyle brought him closer and closer to climax until it was finally too much. With a choked back cry, he finally came, one hand firmly gripping the side of the bed, one hand holding Doyle's shoulder hard enough to bruise.

Doyle wriggled back up and took him in a firm hold.

"You mean everything to me," Doyle whispered in his ear. "So don't you dare fucking turn."

"I won't," Bodie promised, even knowing how little such a promise meant. Then he put his arms around Doyle and held him as tightly as they both could bear until they fell asleep.

Doyle woke early the next morning. Not that he'd slept much. He'd mostly lain awake, holding onto Bodie as he snored his way through the night. Typical, that, Bodie making a decision that might mean his own death and then sleeping as soundly as a baby. Doyle wasn't built like that. He was a born worrier.

He was worried about this bloody trial, that was for certain. Even though he could see the sense in it, it still seemed like the danger was too great. He didn't want to risk the man he loved on an unproven vaccine, even if that vaccine could save the world. Didn't want to, but would.

He'd been lying awake for an hour, chewing his lip, when Bodie finally shuddered, rolled over and sat up, one hand clutching his forehead.

"I think there's a little bloke with a hammer having a go at my brain."

"I told you not to drink anything from Phillips' still," Doyle said with just a hint of satisfaction. "Everyone knows it's lethal."

"He told everyone he'd finally got the recipe right."

"That'll teach to believe everything Phillips says." Doyle gave him a shove off the edge of the camp bed. "C'mon, sunshine. Let's get down to the dining hall and get you some Weetabix."

"No thank you." Bodie gave him a long-suffering look as they both began pulling on their clothes. "A cup of tea will be fine for me."

"There'll be no living with you once the tea runs out." 

"England without tea. Can you imagine?"

"We're in Scotland at the moment."

"Christ, how can I forget. One slip like that and Cowley would have me." Bodie pulled a jumper over his head, gave an expansive stretch, and then looked more carefully at Doyle. "Oi, did you sleep at all last night?"

"Yeah," he said, hoping the lie wasn't quite as transparent as it felt.

"Pull the other one. It's got bells on."

Apparently his lying needed some work, if even a hung-over Bodie had sussed him out. 

"I'll be fine once I've had some breakfast."

Bodie gave him a sceptical look, but let it go. They left the Magazine, and emerged into a brilliant late summer day, with the sun shining and a refreshing breeze blowing lightly on their faces. Even Bodie perked up a bit in the fresh air.

They walked down to the Governor's House in silence, with Doyle taking comfort in Bodie's presence at his side. They had just passed under the Guard House that straddled the path when Lily came tumbling out of the place and nearly bowled them both over.

"We've heard something!" she said with absolutely no preamble. "Well, someone really. A voice! A man's voice. In London."

"There's no one left in London," Doyle said dully. He remembered too well the time he'd spent in London with Stuart, the two of them rattling around a dead city, with only ghosts and the infected for company. "No one not infected, anyway."

"This man's not infected. The infected can't talk, can they?" Lily's voice was as determined as only a twelve-year-old girl's could be. "And he said he's in London."

"Did you tell him?" Lily's friend Sheryl came running out of the Guard House, with Leslie right behind her.

"She told me you've heard a voice," Doyle said.

"That's not the important bit." Exasperated, Sheryl turned on her friend. "Tell him the _important_ bit."

"I was getting to it." Doyle nearly smiled as Lily all but stamped her foot. But her next words knocked the smile right off his face. "He says he's found a cure."

"What?" 

"A cure?" Bodie had been holding back, but he was suddenly interested enough to overcome his fear of pre-adolescent girls, all signs of his hangover gone. "He said he has a cure?"

"Well..." Lily suddenly was less than confident of her information. "It _sounded_ like he said cure. The reception was a bit dodgy."

"He said cure, Lily," Sheryl broke in. "You know he did."

"Where was this mysterious person with a mysterious cure?"

"I think he said he was in University College. That was Aunt Grace's school!"

"That's plausible, at least," Bodie said. The team at Grace's university had come the closest to producing a vaccine before everything had completely broken down in London. If any of them had survived, they _might_ have gone one step further and found an actual cure. "Did he say he could get to Dumbarton?"

"I don't think he could hear us." Lily frowned. "We kept asking questions, but he never answered them. Just kept saying the same thing over and over. And then his voice just disappeared."

"He must have signed off," said Bodie.

"Or it was a recording like ours. Or interference knocked the signal out." Doyle turned back to Lily. "You need to tell your aunt what you heard." He tried to ignore the sudden lightness in his chest. If there was a cure, maybe the vaccine wasn't needed. Maybe Bodie didn't need to volunteer to be a lab rat after all.

"And Cowley," Bodie added.

"Definitely Cowley." He shooed Lily and her friends in front of him. "C'mon, girls. Let's go see the Cow."

Cowley was talking to Grace, discussing the administration of the vaccine trial, when three girls and two CI5 agents burst into his office, all seemingly talking at once. It was one of the many times a day he wished Betty had made it out of London. He'd been sadder than he was ever likely to admit when Doyle had told him of her fate, back when he'd first arrived at the castle. She'd deserved better than to become one of the infected. But then, so had a lot of people.

"We heard something!" Lily was saying, as her two friends both jumped up and down and Doyle tried to calm them.

"Quiet, the lot of you," Cowley finally bellowed, and that did the trick, though the silence that followed was almost as jarring as the uproar that had preceded it. "Now what is going on?" He turned to Doyle as possibly the most reasonable of the group, Bodie being hopeless where the children were concerned. 

"Lily and her friends have heard something," Doyle began.

"A voice!" Lily jumped in. "We heard a voice. In London. Someone at Aunt Grace's school."

"That's impossible," Grace said.

"It's true." Lily seemed affronted that her aunt doubted her word. "We know what we heard. And that's not all. He said he had a cure for the virus."

That announcement set off another small riot, as Grace tried to grill her niece and Lily's friends affirmed what she'd said. Realizing they were going to get nowhere like this, Cowley nodded at Doyle, who let out a piercing whistle. When quiet had been restored once again, Cowley turned to Lily.

"I want you to tell me what you heard, as precisely as you can."

The girl looked at her aunt and then back at Cowley, frowning with concentration. Then she took a big breath and started.

"He said 'This is Professor Orange at University College, London. I have found a cure for the Rage virus and am looking for more survivors. We are in a lab off Taviton Street in Bloomsbury. Please respond.' She turned to her friends when she'd finished. "Was that it?"

"It was," two girls said in unison.

Cowley kept his eyes on Grace as her niece was speaking. She tensed at the mention of this Professor Orange, but didn't react otherwise.

"And did you respond?"

"We did." Lily and her friends nodded furiously. "But he didn't seem to be able to hear us."

"His receiver probably doesn't have the power of ours." Cowley turned to Grace. "Do you know this Professor Orange?"

"I do." Grace bit her lip. "Jason and I were the lead researchers on our team and our lab was on Taviton. I thought he was dead. I thought they were all dead." Cowley saw her eyes harden as she spoke. He understood why too well. Better to harden your own heart than let the pain of the world wound it.

"What do you think of this claim of a cure?" 

"I don't know." She shrugged. "We were working on a vaccine, not a cure. He would have had to go in a very different direction to find a real cure to the virus. Even assuming it is Jason."

"But could he have done it, if he'd gone in that different direction?"

"Jason was a brilliant virologist, and he had some talented grad students." Cowley noted her use of the past tense. "They could have come up with something, if he'd abandoned the vaccine research. And if they'd survived."

Cowley weighed his options. At the castle, there was a vaccine produced by a woman he knew and trusted. In London, there was the possibility of a cure developed by a man he didn't know and who might not even be who he said he was. The draw of a cure was strong, but did the risks warrant what could only be a dangerous trip into London? Both the vaccine and the cure were important, but for the moment he could only concentrate his resources on one.

"I think we should seek out your Professor Orange--" The girls started to jump excitedly. "But not yet."

"Ohhh," the girls said in a chorus. There was no one, Cowley reflected, who could sound quite so disappointed as a pre-adolescent girl.

"I don't have to tell you how important a cure would be, George," Grace said. Cowley pointedly ignored Doyle's raised eyebrow at Grace's use of his given name.

"No you don't, but it's no good to us down south. It's over 400 miles from here to London, with nothing but hordes of the infected on the way. I don't want to risk any of our people on what may, in the end, be nothing but a wild goose chase. Or worse, have it be bait for a trap set up by someone like Willis. But once we prove your vaccine is effective--"

"Then we can go find Jason and his cure," Grace completed his thought.

"With our people protected by your vaccine, and with enough fire power that we won't be vulnerable if it _is_ a trap." Cowley turned to the girls and his two men. "For the moment I don't want you sharing any of this with anyone else. Best not to get everyone's hopes up about a cure before we know if it's real."

The girls nodded, their young faces very serious indeed. Bodie and Doyle nodded too, though he thought he could see the beginnings of some rebellion in Doyle's manner. But then, the day Doyle didn't show some sign of rebellion would be the day he stopped drawing breath.

Grace was the one, however, who voiced an objection to his orders.

"What if Jason is in danger? What if he can't hold out until we get there?" Her concern for her friend and colleague did her credit, even if it was something he couldn't bow to.

"Your Professor Orange, if it really is the man you knew, has held out for months now in the heart of London. He should be able to last a few more weeks, don't you think?"

Grace agreed, albeit reluctantly. 

"Now don't you girls have classes to be attending?" Cowley gave the three of them a forbidding look that had them running for the door. "And I believe you have a clinical trial to be running, Dr Edwards?" Grace nodded, and started leaving the room, and Cowley turned to Bodie and Doyle.

"You don't have to remind me I'm one of Grace's lab rats." Bodie threw up his hands and followed Grace out the door.

"Don't look at me; I'm off duty for the moment," Doyle said, even as he trailed his partner out the door.

Cowley allowed himself a brief sigh of relief as the door closed behind the lot of them. Another crisis dealt with, another decision made. Not for the first time, he wished his worst problems were Irish terrorists and Russian spies. Homicidal plague victims and the end of the world weren't anything he'd ever thought he'd have to deal with. But then again, he supposed there weren't many people who'd prepared for the sort of world they were faced with. And one that he feared was going to get much worse before it got better.

From the start, he'd hoped, prayed even, that the plague would be restricted to England and the British Isles, and for a while it seemed it had. He'd been hopeful when Europe had agreed to take Britain's refugees, even if they hadn't got out nearly enough people. But they'd got out some. He'd taken comfort in that.

But now Cowley wasn't sure that Europe shouldn't have let them burn, shouldn't have let this island, _his_ island, die. Shouldn't have sped on their demise with a nuke or ten. Because in the weeks after the evacuation he'd listened as signals all across Europe had weakened and gone silent, one by one. Somehow, impossibly, one of the evacuees, one of _his_ people, must have carried the Rage virus to Europe. Which left him responsible for what might very well be the end of the world. And which was why he was so desperate for Grace's vaccine to work. And a cure…

A cure would be their salvation. If Professor Orange was who he said he was. If he really had a cure. If they could get to him before the infected did. If, if, if. He was becoming heartily sick of that word.

For the moment, he would hope for the best and plan for the worst, just as he always did.

For Bodie, his memory of the next week was all about waiting.

Grace had only wanted to give the vaccine to two people a day so she could suspend the trial if any side effects appeared, so she had all the volunteers draw lots. Bodie had pulled the last position, while Murphy, the lucky bastard, had pulled the first.

"I won't look so lucky if the vaccine gives me the virus, will I?" Murphy had told them as he rolled up his sleeve.

Then Grace wanted everyone to wait five days from the time they were vaccinated before they were cleared for patrols.

"You're lucky," Grace had told them all. "Most vaccines don't grant immunity for two weeks. With the virus itself so potent, we think the vaccine will be similarly strong."

"Five days seems a bloody long time," Bodie had grumbled two days after he got his shot.

"Better than two weeks, though." Murphy had given him a friendly shove.

"Easy for you to say. You're already cleared for patrols."

"Only three more days for you."

Since he couldn't leave the castle, and needed to be around to give Grace the twice daily blood samples she insisted on, Bodie started helping Doyle teach the civilians in their midst how to shoot and defend themselves.

Which was why he found himself on top of Dumbarton Rock beside the Magazine, setting up tin cans for target practice when Lily came running over to them, breathless from having tackled the hundreds of stairs up to the peak at top speed.

"It works!" she shouted when she finally got her breath back. "It actually works!"

"What works?" Doyle asked, although he must have been in no more doubt than the rest of them about the cause of Lily's excitement.

"Aunt Grace's vaccine." Lily gave Doyle a look that showed how stupid she clearly considered most adults were.

"How do you know, Lily?" Bodie asked as their trainees started buzzing around him. "And Simpson, put the bloody safety on your weapon."

"Murphy was on patrol with Mr Sinclair and Miss Fletcher. They were on the outskirts of the city, looking for a food warehouse one of the new people had told them about, and they ran into a nest of the infected." By this time, everyone was gathered around the girl, listening avidly to her account. "Murphy got bit before he could react, and Mr Sinclair and Miss Fletcher caught the blood spray when he took one of the infected's heads off, but they're all okay. No one turned!"

The low key hum of their trainees erupted into wild whooping and shouting.

"You're sure?" Doyle asked over the din, even as he reached out a hand and took a bruising hold on Bodie's arm. "You're absolutely sure?"

"Yes--"

Doyle didn't wait for the girl to say more. He grabbed Bodie in a crushing hug.

"Thank Christ," he whispered into Bodie's ear as the celebration surrounded them. "Thank fucking Christ for that."

As soon as Doyle released him, Bodie dragged him down the stairs to the Governor's House and Grace's lab. He believed Lily, he really did, but he wanted to confirm the truth of her news with his own eyes. Until he did, it wouldn't be real to him. There he found a serious-looking Grace stitching up a ragged wound in the flesh of Murphy's arm as Murph complained bitterly about the process.

"I think it hurt less when that bastard bit me."

"You CI5 types are just big babies," Grace said as she finished tying off the last stitch.

"I know why you didn't become a medical doctor," Murphy said. "You've got no bedside manner to speak of."

"I could just amputate," Grace warned as she placed a dressing on the wound. "Then you'd have reason to complain."

"You're lucky you're not one of her lab rats," Murphy said to Doyle. "She's got no heart."

"You'll be all right," Doyle said before turning to Grace and asking the question Bodie wanted answered. "The vaccine's worked, then?"

"I'll have to take blood tests. Make sure the virus isn't hiding in his system anywhere."

"But it worked," Doyle pressed.

"Yes." As she said the word the serious expression on her face finally cracked and she gave the biggest smile Bodie had ever seen. "I do believe it has."

"Oh, Grace..." Doyle's voice cracked before he could say more, and he gave her a hug and a gentle kiss on the cheek. Bodie felt dislocated by his own relief. They had a vaccine. And if it worked on Murphy, it would work on Doyle, too. It was all he could do to restrain himself from having Grace vaccinate Doyle now.

"Doyle," she said, putting a gentle hand on his arm. "I'm sorry this was too late to save your family."

Bodie watched Doyle carefully as Murphy pretended not to listen. Doyle hadn't really talked about what had happened to his family, hadn't talked much about knowing Grace growing up, and Bodie had wondered how deep that hurt went.

"We all lost people," Doyle said, his eyes gone flinty cold even as he reached out and put an arm around Bodie. "I'm just grateful that this bastard is safe."

Their emotions were too close to the surface, Bodie thought, even as he felt the back of his own throat go tight. There would be time for that, later, but not now. Just now what he most needed was Doyle's laughter.

"Less of the bastard, Sunny Jim," he said as he twisted in Doyle's grasp and put him in a loose, playful headlock. Doyle fought back and it all turned into a good-natured scuffle that only ended when Murphy complained they'd bumped his arm and Grace yelled at them all to get out of her lab before they broke something.

The three of them headed instinctively for the Great Hall, where a mob of people had already gathered. The murmuring of the crowd grew louder as they saw Murphy approach, and the cheering when Murphy declared the vaccine had worked was louder than even when Grace had announced the vaccine.

The celebrations this time were less alcohol-fuelled—Bodie reckoned the party after the vaccine announcement had used up most of the alcohol in the castle—but even more hopeful. There was a real sense that they'd all seen the worst and things were going to get better.

But even the contagious optimism that seemed to have infected every person in the castle, man, woman and child, couldn't seem to completely banish the darkness that lurked at the edges of Doyle's expression. Bodie saw it as they all toasted Grace with a completely inadequate batch of homemade gin, and as they watched several young couples dance to the music from the ad hoc band that had sprung up mere days after they'd arrived at Dumbarton.

"You've never talked about your family," Bodie said. They were sitting at the edge of the hall, and Bodie had his arm slung around Doyle as the castle's kids tore around between the dancers.

"Nothing to talk about," Doyle said stiffly. "Grace told me they're dead. That's all there is to it."

"I'm sorry." The words were inadequate, but Bodie wasn't sure what else he could say. Because he was sorry. He'd only met Doyle's family a few times, but they'd all seemed lovely, even the kids. They certainly hadn't deserved their fate.

"No need to be sorry, Bodie." Doyle clutched his arm tightly. "You're my family now."

Bodie froze for a moment. Doyle meant the world to him, but he'd never thought to call him family. In his experience, family was a hardship and a trial, not something you'd actively seek out. But Doyle was anything but a hardship and a trial, and being someone his partner considered family was, Bodie now realized, possibly the best thing that had ever happened to him.

"You're going to regret saying that one day," Bodie whispered into Doyle's ear as the band jerked into a mellow rendition of Over the Hills and Far Away. It was a bloody soppy tune, Bodie thought as Doyle looked at him, his green eyes wide and clear in the flickering candle light of the hall.

"No," Doyle said. "I don't think I will."

Leave it to Bodie, Doyle thought. Give him good news, and the fact that Grace's vaccine seemed to work was definitely good news, and he'd still find something to whinge on about. This morning it was all the things he missed about pre-plague life. Which, seeing as this was Bodie, mostly meant food.

"But do you know what I miss most?" Bodie asked as they stood in the breakfast line in the Great Hall. Doyle watched the kitchen volunteers serve up lashings of oatmeal with the added treat of a stunted, barely ripe apple pinched by a patrol from a local orchard while he fervently hoped the apples didn't have worms this time. His last one had had a bit more protein in it than he generally cared for in his fruit.

"Hot water?" Doyle offered. That was certainly what he missed most, their generators not being nearly up to producing enough hot water for showers for everyone in the castle.

"No," Bodie said, a particular light in his eye. "Bacon."

"I should have known," Doyle laughed. "You and your fried grub."

"You can't tell me you don't miss bacon, Doyle. The smell. The crunch of it between your teeth. The taste." 

"Never liked the stuff," Doyle said curtly. That had always been his public stance, anyway, and he wasn't going to recant now. Not when they weren't likely to see bacon for a good long while.

"Liar," Bodie said, giving him a friendly elbow in the ribs. Doyle briefly lost his balance and pushed into the person in front of him.

"Watch where you're going, Doyle. This isn't a bloody rugby field." 

"Sorry, Murph."

"You bleeding aren't. Some people have no fucking consideration."

"Now calm down." Instinctively, Doyle knew this wasn't like Murphy, and he switched automatically to peacekeeper mode, approaching his colleague the same way he used to approach drunken punters on a Friday night when he was a newly minted copper.

" _You_ fucking calm down." There was something wrong with Murphy's body language, a twitchiness that brought to Doyle's mind his encounter with Betty in the bowels of CI5 headquarters.

Without even realizing he was doing it, Doyle was reaching for his gun in his holster. But then there was a burst of giggling in front of them as Lily and her friends shared a joke with Mrs Trenchard, one of the women who'd taken on school teacher duties for the castle's children.

Before Doyle could stop him, Murphy had rounded on the children and their teacher.

"Why can't you all... Shut. Up!"

Doyle grabbed at Murphy, wanting nothing more than to get him away from the girls. Murphy violently shoved Doyle away with a frightening strength, turning his face to Doyle for only a moment, a moment in which Doyle caught a glimpse of suddenly red eyes that he should have known to expect but that still somehow managed to shock him. Then Murphy turned back to the girls and the screaming started.

Before Doyle could regain his footing, he saw a spray of blood from where he'd just seen Leslie standing, then McCabe had his gun out and had shot down Murphy. Doyle could see Mrs Trenchard standing there in shock, covered in blood, though whether it was her own or Murph's or one of the girls', Doyle would never be able to say. But then she snarled and turned and there was a deafening blast by his ear as Bodie shot the woman.

"Are you okay?" Doyle started to say as he moved forward to where the Lily and Sheryl were standing over Leslie, who lay unmoving on the ground. But then Leslie stood as if she'd been picked up carelessly by some invisible giant's hand, and Doyle was shouting at everyone to run, and then he'd pulled his gun and killed a ten-year-old girl who'd suddenly transformed into a monster.

The room exploded in true chaos after that, though experience told Doyle that there was no one else that had been turned. He and Bodie stood guard over the bodies as several other adults took charge of Lily and Sheryl, hustling them away from their dead friend and teacher. He could hear McCabe retching in a corner, and Doyle didn't blame him one bit. He'd been told that McCabe had been the one to gun down Anson when he'd turned, and he'd not been enthusiastic about killing the infected ever since. "They're all someone's family," he'd say. "Even the worst of them have a mum or a husband or a child."

"What happened?" It was a measure of how badly he'd been thrown that Doyle hadn't even heard Grace approaching.

"Murphy happened," Doyle said, his voice sounding off even to his own ears. "He turned, Grace. He fucking turned." It was only then that he allowed himself to look at Bodie. "The vaccine doesn't work. It doesn't fucking work." He felt as if someone had squeezed all the air out of his lungs, and he couldn't breathe and he couldn't think. One thought kept running through his head: Bodie wasn't safe. Bodie could turn, just like any of them.

"Christ," he heard Grace mutter under her breath. "Where are Lynn and Keith?" The volume of her voice increased until she was yelling, her words cutting through the bedlam of the Great Hall. "We've got to find them and get them in isolation." She spared one look at Doyle, then grabbed the still pale and shaking McCabe and two other CI5 agents and ran out of the hall.

Doyle closed his eyes and took a deep breath, filling his lungs and hoping the air would stop the horrible hollow feeling in his chest, in his head. He started when he felt a hand lightly touch his elbow, and opened his eyes to find Bodie standing right beside him, looking concerned.

"The vaccine doesn't work," Doyle repeated, unable to get beyond that one thought.

"I know, Ray." Bodie's voice was calm and careful, the voice he used when dealing with someone he felt in need of extra compassion. "I saw." He stopped and looked carefully at Doyle, as if judging him, and then he spoke again. "But that's not the worst thing."

"Really? Because it's pretty fucking bad, if you ask me."

"What if the vaccine didn't just fail to keep Murphy from turning?" Bodie asked, and at last Doyle could see where this was going. "What if it was the thing that turned him?"

"Jesus," Doyle said, the word a single, light breath. Then he grabbed Bodie's arm and held on to him, as if that grip could keep his partner from becoming a monster who killed school girls and teachers without pausing for thought.

Bodie let him stand like that for a good minute, but then he finally took him by the shoulder and shook him.

"C'mon, Doyle. Let's find Cowley and then figure out if there's anything we can do."

So close. They'd been so close, Cowley thought. With the lack of side effects so far from Grace's vaccine, Cowley had begun to plan for how they could get things back to normal by the end of the year. They would vaccinate everyone, and then send a team down to London to investigate that Professor Orange's claim that he had a cure. Come Christmas, they'd be on their way to curing all the infected and sorting out the country.

What had just happened in the dining hall had shown all those plans up for the fantasies they were.

Instead of planning for the orderly vaccination of all their charges in the castle, he instead found himself talking to Grace about what steps they needed to take to protect them from those already vaccinated, as all his careful plans evaporated around him like so much morning mist. 

"Jax, track down Mr Sinclair and Miss Fletcher." Cowley turned to Phillips. "Clear everyone out of the French Prison and get it ready to serve as an isolation ward." He noted the arrival of Bodie and Doyle as he finished his orders to Phillips. "I'm afraid you two are going to lose your private hideaway sooner rather than later," he told them. "We'll have to move people from the French Prison to the Magazine if we're to have beds for everyone."

"How do I make that mouldering old building into an isolation ward?" Phillips asked.

"Dr Edwards can help you with that." Cowley spared a look at Grace, and she nodded. "Now, go, the pair of you."

Bodie waited until Grace and Phillips had left on their errand before he sprung the next bombshell.

"I think you should place all of us who had the vaccine in isolation, along with Keith and Lynn," Bodie said to Cowley.

"Dr Edwards doesn't think there's any need for that yet." Cowley had raised the same issue with Grace when she'd appeared in his office, white, shaking, and with the worst news he'd heard in weeks. But she was convinced that the vaccine wasn't dangerous, even if it didn't offer the protection from the virus that they'd hoped for.

"When will there be need for it? When one of us turns? When we've killed half the people in the castle and turned the rest?" Bodie shook his head as Doyle stood beside him, a silent bulwark of support for his partner. Bodie's jaw was set in a way Cowley recognized from countless other times when Bodie had decided on a course he would not be swayed from. Doyle bit his lip, and looked a bit paler than usual. "We saw how fast Murphy turned. If we hadn't been right there, if we hadn't been armed, we would have lost more than just Evie Trenchard and Leslie."

"Point taken, laddie." Cowley didn't like to do it, lock up the men and women who'd taken the brave step of testing the vaccine they'd all hoped would be their salvation, but it was clear that was exactly what they needed to do. "Can I trust you two to get all the volunteers to the French Prison?"

"You can, sir," Bodie said, answering for them both.

"Off with you, then." Cowley went to turn back to the myriad other problems the morning's disaster had thrown up, when Doyle spoke up.

"Can I ask you a favour, sir?"

"That depends on the favour, Doyle." Never agree to anything until you know what it is. And even then, make sure you've looked at it from all the angles before you say yes. His first mentor in the army had told him that, and it had become one of the rules he lived by, even when the person asking the favour was one of his acknowledged blue-eyed boys.

"Could you assign me to guard duty at the French Prison?

"You know what that might mean?" Cowley didn't spell out what Doyle would be called on to do if Bodie turned. He didn't have to.

"I do, sir." Doyle bit his lip before continuing. "Bodie and I have already discussed that. We know what would be required."

He was as proud of the two of them in that moment as he'd ever been. He didn't doubt their devotion to each other, not when he knew exactly how close they'd become, but he also knew absolutely that they wouldn't flinch from doing what had to be done to save the civilians under their care.

Of course, he also knew they'd both stretch the rules as far as they'd go to save the other, so he wasn't about to trust them absolutely. But in this case...

"Then consider yourself assigned to the French Prison until further notice." He waved the two of them off. "Now go find the rest of the volunteers."

As the two of them scrambled out of his office, Cowley threw a prayer up to the God that appeared to have abandoned him and this emerald isle that they'd seen the worst the virus was going to do inside the castle, and his people wouldn't be called upon to make another in a long line of sacrifices.

It had been one hell of a fucking day, Bodie thought as he lay on the hard bed inside a cell in the French Prison. A hell of a day, and he was exhausted, but still he couldn't sleep. He stared at the stone wall at the foot of his bed, listened to the others sleeping around him, and wished they knew more. He wished they knew if Keith and Lynn were going to turn. He wished they knew if the vaccine had merely failed, or if it had caused infection. He wished they knew how long they were going to be stuck in this bloody place before they were let go. Or killed.

"You should be asleep, you know." Doyle's voice broke in on his thoughts. He turned to see his partner sitting on a stool outside his cell. Doyle was in a t-shirt, his holster clearly visible, his gun held loosely on his lap. Doyle hadn't taken off the holster since Murphy had turned, and he'd kept hold of the gun for every three-hour stretch he'd sat guard with the vaccine volunteers.

"You're awake."

"I'm on guard duty."

"Don't remind me."

"Sorry." Doyle winced and looked repentant.

"Don't worry about it." Bodie went back to staring at the brick wall, and the net curtain someone had installed on the cell's window before they'd been kicked out and sent to the Magazine.

It was, Bodie thought, far from the worst place he'd ever been held. The bed he was lying on wasn't too uncomfortable, and each cell had homey touches that had been added by the people who'd been calling the building home for the last month, ever since the Governor's House had filled up with the refugees that even now they were still finding in small villages and neighbourhoods: the curtains on his window, children's drawings taped up in the next cell. And his cell door wasn't even locked. The only cell that was locked was the one that held Keith Sinclair and Lynn Fletcher.

Bodie twisted and looked over at their cell. Keith was lying on his side, snoring softly, while Lynn was sprawled on her stomach and equally asleep, though they'd been the last to drift off. Not that Bodie blamed them. As famed as he was for being able to sleep under any conditions, he wasn't sure he'd be able to sleep while waiting to turn into a monster.

Though, really, he supposed, that's exactly what he was doing as well. It's just that he hadn't been hit by infected blood spray.

"You should try and sleep, Bodie."

"I'm fine, Doyle." He stretched out his arms and sat up. "Did I ever tell you about the time I stayed awake for five days straight in Africa?"

"Africa," Doyle snorted.

"Yes, Africa. I got separated from my unit in some nasty little bush fight, and I knew my only hope was to walk out of enemy territory. I was hallucinating so badly by the time I got back to my camp that I thought a baboon was an enemy soldier. Shot the bastard half a dozen times before I realized my mistake."

"Poor baboon."

"Poor me. I used up the last of my ammunition."

"Ah, but you can look after yourself."

They both froze as Keith turned and let out a particularly loud snore, then relaxed as he drifted back to a quieter sleep.

"I'd rather have you to look after me," Bodie said, with absolutely no irony. It was nothing less than the truth. He'd been a lone wolf for years when he'd joined CI5, had thought he was better off on his own. But a few months paired with Doyle had cured him of that notion. They'd fought so much at first that it was a wonder they hadn't killed each other, but in the end they'd formed a bond stronger than any he'd thought possible.

"I'm right here, Bodie. I'll always be right here."

For a brief moment Bodie wished they were back in the Magazine, back on their own, and that he could pull Doyle into bed with him and wrap him tightly in his arms and fall asleep listening to the soothing sounds of his breathing. But they weren't on their own, and Bodie had made a point of keeping his distance from everyone--even Doyle; especially Doyle--since Murphy had turned. He didn't want to kill anyone if he turned himself. He especially didn't want to doom Doyle to either death or the living death of infection.

"Thanks, Ray." Bodie looked at Doyle, and he hoped those two words conveyed all the things he couldn't say, but needed Doyle to know, all the respect and, yes, the love he felt for the man. He fancied the expression on Doyle's face told the same story.

"You're welcome. Now lie down and go to sleep, you daft bastard."

"I'll lie down, but I can't promise I'll get to sleep," Bodie said. But this time when he stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes he drifted off in spite of his best efforts to stay awake.

He woke to the sound of voices.

"It's happening, Ray."

"No, it's not, Lynn. You're just nervous. It's understandable."

"I may be nervous, but I still feel different. I can feel it starting."

"Sit down, Lynn." Doyle was using his professional voice, the one he used to calm innocent civilians and inexperienced villains. And Bodie could tell it wasn't working on Lynn Fletcher one bit.

"Why won't you believe me?" she screamed.

"Because I don't want to shoot you."

That voice drove the last remnants of sleep from Bodie's mind, and he stood and moved to the door of his cell. Doyle had his back to him. His gun was holstered and his hands were up in a gesture meant to inspire calm. It wasn't working with Lynn.

He wasn't the only one who'd been woken. All the other volunteers were standing in the doors of their cells, watching the drama play out. And Keith Sinclair was sitting on his own bed, his face a mix of fear and determination as he watched his cellmate gradually unravel.

"You're going to have to, Ray. We both know it." She grabbed at the door of the cell with a jerking motion that made Bodie think of Murphy in the Great Hall, made him think of all the other people he'd seen turn in the last few months. "Why don't you just fucking do it?"

"Lynn--" Doyle started to say, but before he could finish his thought a shuddering convulsion racked Lynn's body. She clutched her torso with both hands and grimaced and screamed, and when she finally looked back up at Doyle, her eyes had gone blood red.

Doyle didn't hesitate for an instant. He drew his weapon, aimed and shot Lynn once through the head. Her body dropped to the ground still shuddering in that grotesque way the infected always seemed to have as they died.

"Let me out of here, Doyle," Keith Sinclair said, even as he watched the pool of blood from Lynn's body spread across the floor.

"I can't do that, Keith."

"Can't you? You bloody bastard." Without warning, Keith was rushing to the bars, his movements jerky and by now far too recognizable. 

Doyle made the second shot as Jax rushed into the building, and as their colleague watched the former farmer fell to the ground, his red eyes fixed on Doyle with accusation and malice.

"Christ," Jax said, his gun held loosely at his side.

"Go get Grace," Doyle said to him, his voice low and strangely drained of emotion. Jax hesitated for an instant too long, and that brought out the fire in Doyle. "Now!" he shouted. This time Jax moved, running back out of the building, even as two of the younger CI5 recruits ran in.

Doyle's shout seemed to break the spell that had held all of the other volunteers silent. They all gathered in a knot, whispering quietly to each other, casting side glances at the bodies on the floor that had so recently been their friends. All of them except Bodie, that is. Bodie stayed where he'd been, standing in the door of his cell, watching not the bodies, not the other volunteers, but Doyle. Doyle who was standing so still, so silently, who was watching those bodies not surreptitiously, but was steadily staring at them as if they held the answer to a mystery he very badly needed to solve.

Bodie could finally take no more of it. He walked carefully up to Doyle, making sure that Doyle registered his presence even if he didn't turn away from the bodies, from what used to be Lynn and Keith and were now just so much diseased meat.

"Are you okay?" he asked, putting a hand lightly on Doyle's shoulder.

Doyle flinched under his touch, but didn't otherwise move.

"Of course I'm not fucking okay," Doyle snapped back, loudly enough that the volunteers all looked sharply in his direction before turning back to their own conversations. "Are you?"

Bodie shook his head.

"I just—" But whatever Doyle might have been going to say was cut off when there was a creaking of the main door and Grace entered, with Jax and several of the other scientists behind her, all of them dressed in contamination suits designed to protect them from the virus. The other scientists began the job of clearing up the bodies and decontaminating the cell where they'd fallen as Grace gathered the volunteers to her.

"I know we're all tired and upset, but I'd like you all to be patient. My colleagues are going to take care of Lynn and Keith, and I'm going to look after all of you." At the increased murmuring from her audience, Grace put up her hands. "I'm just going to examine all of you, make sure none of you are showing signs of infection, and take more blood samples."

"Why should we let you take more blood from us?" Lake said, panic and fatigue in his eyes.

"We're doing this for your safety. We're going to check if any of you have the virus building up in your systems. And we'll be taking blood samples more frequently."

"How frequently?" Judith asked.

"Three times a day."

"You're just a bunch of vampires yourselves," Lake shot back.

"Put a sock in it, Lake," Judith said. Bodie had always liked her. She was a tough old bird who'd shown up at the castle under her own steam with a shotgun in one hand and a hunting knife in the other. And she'd known how to use both. "Let the woman do her job."

"Thank you, Judith." Grace stopped talking for a moment and looked at the people surrounding her. She'd asked all of these people to risk their lives, and the lives of the people they loved, to test her vaccine. Bodie wondered how she felt just about now. Because if he'd been in her shoes, he'd have been fucking angry. Angry at himself, and angry at the virus, and just fucking angry. But Grace was a professional, and she showed no anger, no fear. She put up one hand to get everyone's attention, and instead of giving them doubt, she gave them hope.

"I think we know now that the vaccine doesn't work. It didn't keep Murphy or Lynn or Keith from getting the virus. But I also want to point out that it also hasn't caused infection. Murphy and Keith and Lynn had all been exposed to the virus. None of you have. There's every reason to believe that you'll all be fine."

"Then let us out of here," Lake said. 

"I can't do that." Grace was calm, but firm. Bodie couldn't help but admire the way she was handling this, even if she was deciding his fate. "You must understand that until we're absolutely certain that you're in no danger of contracting the virus, we can't let you into the castle's general population. If we're wrong, if even one of you turn, it could be disastrous."

It was nothing they didn't know, and Bodie could see some reluctant nods amongst the other volunteers.

"I'm also going to have to ask you all to put up with one more thing. We're going to lock the doors of your cells."

There was a major uproar at that, as well there might be. Until now, Lynn and Keith had been the only ones in a locked cell, though Bodie had been expecting this. Much as he hated the idea of being behind a locked door, it only made sense. They were all a potential threat. You didn't let a threat wander free, even in a closed environment. You confined a threat, you pulled its teeth.

"No bloody way," Lake said, his jaw set firmly.

"I'm going to have to insist, Lake." Grace was firm, and Bodie was pleased to see that Doyle was backing her up, standing by her side with his hand hovering over the grip of his weapon.

"Don't be an ass, Lake." Judith was as calm and forthright as she always was. "Let the woman do her job."

"You think her job is locking us up?" Lake was getting more and more agitated.

"Her job is keeping everyone safe," Doyle said, his hand now clearly gripped around the grip of his gun. "Not just you."

"What about you, Doyle? Are you going to lock up Bodie?" 

Bodie caught Doyle's eye and nodded at him, willing to be used as an object demonstration of what had to happen.

"Yes, I am."

Bodie backed into his cell and stood with one hand clutching the bars as Doyle moved towards him. Doyle closed the cell door and locked it, his face impassive the whole time. After he finished turning the key in the lock, he let his fingers brush against Bodie's hand, then he nodded stiffly at Bodie and turned to face the other volunteers. If he was going to turn, was going to become a monster, it wasn't the sort of last contact he would want with Doyle, but he knew it was all he was going to get. 

"What do you reckon, Lake? You going to step into your cell or am I going to have to make you?" Doyle made no attempt to mask the menace in his voice at all, and Bodie could see Lake register that fact.

After a long, tense minute, Lake turned and walked into his cell, dropping onto his bed with his arms crossed.

"Fine. You've won this time. But you can't keep us locked up forever."

"It won't be forever," Grace assured them. "Just until we can make sure you're all well."

As the others made their way into their own cells, Bodie wished that Grace had given them some sort of time line for when exactly that might be.

Doyle stayed on guard in the cells as long as he could manage, not wanting Bodie out of his sight for an instant. But by the next afternoon he'd been nearly thirty-six hours without sleep, and he was practically unconscious on his feet.

"You need a break, Doyle," Bodie said to him as he passed by his cell. "You look like shit."

"I'm all right." He didn't want to admit weakness to anyone. Not even Bodie. Admit weakness, and they might not let him stay here. Admit weakness, and the next time he saw Bodie he might be a corpse with a bullet in his head.

"You're going to pass out. Let Jax keep an eye on us for a bit."

"There's no--" Doyle started to object, but Bodie didn't even let him finish his sentence.

"Hey, Jax." Bodie raised his voice and addressed their colleague, currently talking quietly with Sally. "You'll be all right if Doyle goes for a kip, yeah?"

"Absolutely." Jax moved closer, and Doyle could see him narrow his eyes. "You look like shit, Doyle."

"Told you." Bodie looked far too pleased to have his opinion confirmed.

"Go sleep in the guard room. You can kick McCabe out of the bed. It's past time for him to come back on shift."

Outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, Doyle had to agree.

"I'll be back in a few hours," he told Bodie. "You're not getting rid of me that easily."

So he went to the guard room, roused McCabe and took his place on the singularly uncomfortable cot that had been placed in the room for whoever was off duty. In spite of how bone-numbingly tired he was, he was convinced he wouldn't be able to sleep, that both his concern for Bodie and the lumpy mattress would keep him awake. But in the end, he barely remembered his head hitting the pillow before he was out.

He woke in the dark, with the muted sounds of panic beyond the door and the dream memory of a gunshot. Slipping his holster over his shoulders, he was running into the main prison building before the sleep had cleared his head. The scene that greeted him was now too familiar. Two bodies lay in two cells, McCabe had his gun out and aimed, and Jax was trying desperately to calm down the remaining volunteers.

"Who?" Doyle asked, grabbing Jax's shoulder.

"Scott Polson and Lake."

"Had they had any contact with the infected?"

"You know they hadn't, Doyle." Jax's response was snapped back. "They hadn't been out on patrol since they got the needle. It was the bloody vaccine."

Doyle let go of Jax and spun around the prison, seeking out Bodie. Bodie was standing at the door of his cell, and he reached out his hand as Doyle approached. Doyle took his hand in a bruising grip and looked into his eyes. Bodie's mouth was a tight line, his jaw was clenched, his eyes were clear and blue and determined.

"I'm not going to let you turn," he told Bodie. "I'm just not."

"Don't think you'll have any say in it, Sunshine." He could tell Bodie was aiming for a joking tone, but he missed by a fucking mile.

"Shut up." He put his forehead against the bars, and Bodie did likewise, the two of them standing there, separated by cold metal, until another commotion in the room broke them apart.

Doyle looked up to see Cowley, Grace, and a phalanx of armed men and women drawn from their usual patrols—soldiers, police officers, and civilians, but no members of CI5, Doyle noted—sweep into the prison, with McCabe behind them. Doyle felt a clenching in his gut at the sight, and could see fear in the eyes of the remaining volunteers. Benny and Sally, Judith and Audrey, and even Bodie looked at Cowley the way a condemned man looked at the hangman.

"Doyle, Jax, McCabe. With me." Cowley's tone would brook no defiance, so with one final look at Bodie, Doyle fell in behind Jax and McCabe. He braced himself for bad news as they followed Cowley to the guard room. Cowley let them settle for mere seconds before he came to the point.

"I'm pulling you all from duty in the prison." At least the Cow hadn't bothered to sugar coat his words. Doyle had to respect him for that, even if he was going to fight this order until the end.

"You're not, sir. You're just not." Doyle could sense Jax and McCabe staring at him, but he kept his focus entirely on Cowley. "You said I could serve here."

"I did, laddie. But given what's happened, what's likely to happen, I want no one in the cells that knows those people well."

"I'll do what I have to."

"You think you will, but would you really be able to do it? Pull the trigger if it was Bodie at the other end of the barrel?"

"I shot Leslie. I shot a ten-year-old girl. What more do you want from me?" It wasn't his proudest moment, but surely it would keep him from being separated from Bodie.

"But she wasn't Bodie. She wasn't your partner. She wasn't someone you've known and trusted for years, someone who's trusted you to protect him for years." Cowley shook his head. "I'm sorry, Doyle. But I can't let you stay. Not when the survival of everyone in the castle could depend on acting quickly, no hesitation allowed. Can you honestly say you'd shoot Bodie without a second thought?"

Doyle had no answer for that.

"I thought not." Cowley put his hand on Doyle's elbow, a supportive gesture that Doyle shrugged off in frustration. "Get some sleep, then come see me in the morning. By then, Grace may have better news for all of us." He looked over at Jax and McCabe. "That goes for the two of you as well."

Jax and McCabe didn't need to be told twice, and they dragged Doyle out of the room between them, then down to the Governor's House, where they found a spare bedroll for him in the room they shared with the rest of the CI5 survivors.

He followed them to the room, he lay down where they told him, he shut his eyes and he tried to sleep. He really did. It was soldier's logic, Bodie's logic: sleep when you can, eat when you can, because you never know when the battle's coming. And there was a battle coming, he knew. A battle with Cowley. But he didn't have Bodie's talent for sleeping on demand, so instead he lay on his back, his eyes feeling grittier by the minute, watching the pale grey light of dawn slowly seep into the sky through the room's one high window.

If there was one thing George Cowley hated doing, it was going back on his word. He worked in a dirty business, but he'd always tried to preserve his honour, as much as was possible. And though he'd given Doyle no promise that he'd allow him to stay with Bodie no matter the circumstance, it felt wrong to have separated them. Wrong, but necessary.

As much as Cowley cared for Bodie and Doyle, he couldn't let his concern for them outweigh his responsibility to everyone else in the castle, to all the other survivors he'd gathered in this place. 

So he ordered Doyle and the others out, set up a guard rotation with non-CI5 people in the prison, two inside and one outside at all times, and gave Grace as much support as she needed to clean up the bodies and take yet another round of blood samples from the volunteers. And he oversaw everything, from the careful loading of Polson's and Lake's remains into body bags, to the drawing of blood from every last man and woman in the cells.

Most of them avoided making eye contact with him, as if they could avoid bad news by avoiding his presence. Bodie was the only one who talked to him, who met his eyes with determination.

"Will Doyle be coming back?"

"No, Bodie. I'm afraid he won't."

"Oh." Bodie gave him a look, then, one that mixed both understanding and disappointment. "Could you do me a favour?"

"If I can."

"Give him my best, sir."

"I will, laddie." 

"Thank you, sir."

Cowley could handle no more after that encounter. He made his way to the guard room and waited for Grace to finish. She finally did twenty minutes later, coming to the guard house with a satchel in one hand and an insulated case she used for storing blood samples in the other.

"How do they look, Doctor Edwards?"

"Fine, so far. But then so did Polson and Lake." She held up the case. "I'm hoping these samples will tell me more. Let me see if the virus is building in their blood. Tell me what the vaccine has done."

"I hope they give you good news."

"Have you really done it?" she asked. "Taken Doyle off the guard rotation?"

"Not just Doyle. Jax and McCabe as well. I don't want personal loyalties conflicting with what's best for everyone."

"Of course," Grace said, but her body language told of her conflict. She wouldn't have been human if she hadn't been conflicted about this whole situation.

"You don't agree?"

"I do," she said quickly. "But it doesn't make it any less difficult. Doyle is a friend. He saved me and Lily several times over. And I know how much Bodie means to him."

"It's because Bodie means so much to him that I had to remove Doyle."

Grace didn't respond to that, just frowned and looked down at the case in her hand.

"I should get to the lab. Run the tests on this blood. If I'm quick, I can have the preliminary results back to you by noon."

"By all means, Doctor. Good luck."

Grace left without another word, worrying at her lip with her teeth. Cowley watched her go, a sense of foreboding forming in his stomach, even as he hoped that these latest samples would provide proof the volunteers were healthy, that Polson and Lake turning had been some sort of horrible fluke.

But if her tests showed the worst case scenario, showed that all the volunteers were moving towards turning, he was going to have some decisions to make, none of them good.

Doyle hadn't been able to sleep all night, had watched the dawn break, but then, somehow, he must have dropped off. He woke alone, light from the sun shining brightly on one wall, his bedroll twisted around his legs from where he must have been thrashing in his sleep.

"Fuck." He stood, and ran a hand through his hair, still not used to how short it was. It was shorter than he'd had it for years, since he was a young copper, and it made him feel off, not being able to grab his curls when he needed to think. And he desperately needed to think now.

Cowley. He needed to see Cowley, needed to convince him he could be trusted to stay with Bodie. He didn't want Bodie to be alone. He very much didn't want Bodie to die alone, surrounded by strangers who would be all too willing to shoot him if he showed the slightest sign of infection.

But he wasn't in any shape to talk to Cowley. Not quite yet. 

So he sought out the communal bathing room and gave his face a quick scrub in cold water, then popped into the Great Hall, the place where Murphy had turned so recently. He grabbed a roll and had his weekly ration of one cup of coffee. He didn't reckon there'd be a better reason to have caffeine pumping through his system than the need to face down George Cowley in his den. Then, feeling somewhat more human and ready to face whatever arguments Cowley could level against him, he set off for the room the Cow had commandeered as his office.

He was still down the hall when he heard the sound of voices ahead of him. Two voices: Cowley's and Grace's. At first he couldn't hear what they were saying, but a few careful, quiet steps further and he could make out their words. Words that froze him where he stood.

"...the results of the test yet?"

"Yes, and they're not good." Grace paused, and Doyle could hear her shuffling paper. "All of the volunteers have the virus in their blood. The ones who had the vaccine first have the highest viral load. Judith currently has over five times the amount that Bodie does."

"Will they all turn?"

"I can't tell you that. Not for certain."

"Your best guess, then."

"My best guess? Yes, they'll turn. Unless we find a way to stop the virus."

"I know what you're going to say, Grace, and it's impossible."

"It's not. It's completely possible. London's not that far away. And if Jason really did find a cure, it could save them. It could save us all." Doyle could hear the pleading tone in Grace's voice, and he experienced a moment of hope. With everything kicking off in the castle, Doyle had nearly forgotten about the broadcast Lily and her friends had heard, forgotten about Professor Orange and his cure. Bodie could be saved. But Cowley's next words dashed any hopes he had.

"It would take a team to get to London safely. A team that would be under constant threat. I won't sacrifice more people to save five, however brave those five have been." Cowley's voice was implacable, a voice Doyle had heard too many times when Cowley had ordered them into an impossible situation. "London is out." And then Cowley said something that made hopelessness seem a desirable state. "If you were using monkeys for the tests, what would you do now?"

"We're not using monkeys." Grace was far less matter-of-fact, and Doyle could hear the emotion quivering in her voice.

"But if you were?"

There was a long pause during which Doyle could only heard the shuffling of papers, and then Grace finally spoke.

"I'd eliminate the test subjects."

"You'd kill them." Cowley's voice was hard as the rock the castle was built on, and just as unyielding. At that moment, Doyle hated him more than he'd thought possible.

"Yes." Grace's voice was nearly a whisper.

"We have to do the same to our volunteers."

"They're people, not monkeys!"

"Five of those people have already turned, and taken two others with them. We both know how quickly this thing spreads, and now you've told me the virus is building up in all of them. Those last five volunteers could be the death of everyone in this castle. They could wipe out every last person we've saved. Do you want to know you could have been responsible for stopping that and didn't?"

"Do you want to be responsible for executing five people in cold blood?" Grace threw back at him.

"I'll accept the blame for that. Especially if it saves the rest of our people."

"Well, blame's what you're going to get, once word of this gets out."

"We're none of us innocent in here. Every person inside these walls has seen horrific things, and has probably done horrific things themselves to survive. I think they'll understand."

"I hope so." Grace's tone was bitter. "Because I'm not sure I can."

Doyle stood in the corridor, trying desperately to breathe, to not let what he'd heard overwhelm him. He was so wrapped up with his own thoughts that he nearly didn't notice the sounds of Grace's footsteps approaching the door, and when he did, he had barely enough time to slip into the room next door and hope that Grace hadn't seen him.

As he listened to Grace's footsteps recede into the distance, Doyle slumped to the floor of the thankfully empty room and tried to still his thoughts.

They were going to kill Bodie. That was what it all came down to. And though he'd promised Bodie he would pull the trigger himself if Bodie turned, he found he didn't have the stomach to do it just because there was evidence was he was _going_ to turn.

He needed to save Bodie. Which left one option: London. He needed to break Bodie out of the prison, and get to London. As soon as possible. Tonight.

Even tonight might be too late, but Doyle decided to depend on Cowley not acting until tomorrow morning. That meant he needed to act today. Now.

But he wasn't going to get anything done if he didn't get off his arse. Doyle took a deep breath in, blew it out, and then stood.

He would get Bodie out, he would take him to London and he would find the cure. Or he would die trying. There were no other options left to him.

Doyle spent the rest of the afternoon gathering what he needed--food, sleeping bags, petrol, weapons and ammunition--all while attempting to avoid the notice of everyone else in the castle. Most importantly, he did a recce on the car pool parked just outside the castle's walls and picked out the best vehicle for his purposes. He settled on an old Ford Cortina. It was a reliable old beast, but not one that they'd miss overly much at the castle. He hid what he'd stolen in a cache near the car pool, then settled in to wait for the best opportunity.

He shared an evening meal with Jax and McCabe, relieved that they seemed as reluctant to talk as he did. Then he stood sentry on the wall, making note of the best place to climb the wall down to the cars and biding his time. When he was relieved, by Anika, a young woman who'd arrived last week after hearing Cowley's radio message, he went back to the room where Jax and McCabe were already sleeping, lay down on his borrowed bedroll, and waited.

He waited until everyone had returned to the room, until they were all asleep, until there were no more sounds of movement in the corridor outside, no voices of people talking. And then he moved.

He left the Governor's House and started up the path towards the French Prison without anyone seeing him. Anika had all her attention on the approach to the castle in front of her, and he was out of her sight soon enough. He moved towards the French Prison cautiously, keeping his eye out for the guard he knew must be there. And he wasn't disappointed. Less than a minute after he started his watch, he saw a guard—Steven, a former policeman who'd shown up at the prison with Cowley—complete a circuit of the building and return to the front. Doyle watched Steven's gait, the way he carried himself, the way he kept watch around him. He was good, Doyle could tell that.

The next time the man circled to the front of the building, Doyle was waiting for him. He put Steven in a choke hold before the man could react, and kept the pressure on his throat until he slumped in Doyle's grasp. As he let the man sink gently to the ground and checked his pulse, he stamped down on any guilt that was building at taking down someone on his own side. This was necessary. There was no other way that didn't end in Bodie's death. He needed to remember that.

He stood outside the ancient oak door and wiped his hands on his jeans, balancing on the balls of his feet and preparing himself for what was going to be the hardest part of this operation. There would be at least two more guards inside, perhaps more, and he was going to have to take them all out on his own. Without killing them. His heart was pounding in his chest as he quickly puffed out a breath of air. Then he burst through the door and into the guard room, his fists up and ready to fight.

But there was no response, no guard flying at him, no yelling. Nothing.

Keeping his hands up, he looked around the small room and found the most extraordinary sight. There were two guards in the room, but both were unconscious, one passed out on the room's single cot, one slumped at the rough wooden table in centre.

Also sitting at the table, and most definitely not unconscious, was Grace Edwards. She was sitting bolt upright, her hands clasped in front of her, a serious expression on her face.

"Grace? What...?" Doyle trailed off, not even sure of what question he wanted to ask.

"I've drugged them," she said, looking at the two guards before turning her attention back to Doyle.

"Why?" Doyle felt as if he'd dropped into the middle of a farce where everyone else had been told the plot but him.

"I knew you'd be coming. And I didn't want to see you get hurt. Or hurt anyone else." She raised an eyebrow at his fists, still clenched in front of him. He took the point and dropped his arms to his side.

"How did you know I'd be coming?"

"I saw you in the corridor this afternoon. Outside Cowley's office. I knew you must have heard us, and I knew that you wouldn't give up on Bodie."

"Thank you." The words were inadequate to express what he felt, but there were all he had.

"You're welcome. And it's the least I could do. Lily and I both owe you our lives. I couldn't sit by and do nothing while Bodie died." She paused and fiddled with a canvas case about the size of a hardback book sitting on the table in front of her. "You're going to take him to London?"

"Yeah." Doyle scratched his nose. "It's the only hope for him, isn't it? Unless you've got a cure you've been hiding from us."

"London is the only hope for Bodie." Grace bit her lip, and suddenly he saw not a respected medical researcher, but the teenaged girl she'd been, hanging out with his sister and as insecure as the rest of them. "You have to do me a favour, Ray."

"Anything."

"Bring Jason back here. Unless he's got a group the size of ours here, I don't fancy his chances in London. And if he's here, if we can work together, maybe we can get a proper vaccine working on top of his cure."

"I promise." 

"Good." She gave him a smile that he could tell was forced, but well meaning, then lifted the case in her hand. "Then there's just one other thing I need to give you before you get Bodie out of here." She zipped open the case and laid it open on the table in front of her. Inside the case were several large vials filled with a clear liquid, a number of syringes and needles, and two assembled syringes and needles filled with more of the clear fluid.

Doyle frowned.

"That's not more of the bloody vaccine, is it?"

"No." She pulled out one of the syringes and held it towards him. "It's lorazepam. A sedative," she added in response to his uncomprehending frown.

"I know it's a sedative, but what am I meant to do with it? Calm me nerves?"

"It's not for you. It's for Bodie."

"Bodie?"

"In case he turns." Grace put the syringe carefully back in the case. "Or should I say, for _when_ he turns. Because he's going to, Doyle. Make no mistake. And if you don't load him up full of this before he does, you're going to end up either dead or turned yourself."

"I'm not a doctor. Or a nurse. How am I supposed to give him a needle? Especially if he's fighting me?"

"Easiest thing in the world to administer, a benzo. No need to hit a vein. Just jab him in a big muscle, the thigh, or his bum, and push the plunger. Ten milligrams to start. And if that isn't enough, bang another ten milligrams into him right away. I've loaded up two syringes for you. You'll need to assemble your own after that."

She took a needle, and a syringe and showed him how they fit together, and how to draw the drug into it from the vials. And she made him do it himself twice.

"Just make sure you do it in time," Grace said as she zipped up the case and handed it to him.

"And how do I tell if I'm doing it in time? Do you know when he's going to turn?"

"Bodie had the vaccine last, so he should turn last. Should do, but I'm not making any predictions where the virus is concerned. He could go tomorrow. Or tonight."

"Bloody wonderful," Doyle said as he took the case from Grace.

"You know what he's like, and you saw Murphy turn. And Keith and Lynn. Look for agitation, for unusual behaviour. You see anything suspicious, you dose him. And you keep on dosing him every two hours or until you find Jason."

He held the case in his hand, the concrete embodiment of all his fears about what was to become of Bodie. But also his hope.

"Thanks, Grace." He moved around the table, and gave Grace a quick hug. "You're a good friend."

"It's the least I can do. Since it was me thinking I was such a clever clogs that got us all into this mess."

"You are a clever clogs." Doyle gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. "And I'm sure you'll find a vaccine soon enough. One that really works."

"Never mind me." She gave him a swat and passed him an iron key ring with a number of old fashioned keys on it. "You go and get Bodie."

Bodie was pacing the confines of his cell. Not that there was much room for pacing. Three steps side to side, or five from the bars to the back wall. And that was only if he was checking his stride.

At least he didn't have that arse-faced guard staring at him. Mullens had pissed off to the break room an hour ago and hadn't come back. He hadn't been much of a loss. None of the new people Cowley had installed had proven very friendly. In fact, some of them, the ones that were newer to the castle, hadn't even bothered to introduce themselves. Bodie wondered what their orders were, exactly, if Cowley had given them instructions not to talk to their prisoners, or if they'd decided it was a good idea all on their own. Either way, it didn't exactly inspire an optimistic outlook.

Not that there was any reason for optimism. When Polson and Lake had turned, Bodie had realized they were fucked. All of them. He'd almost wished Cowley had given him a gun and a few private moments so he could end it all decently. Almost, but not quite. He'd been a fighter all his life, from the streets of Liverpool to the African bush. He wasn't going to stop fighting now, wasn't going to be done in by a bloody little virus. If he hadn't turned yet, there was still a chance he wouldn't. That he'd have a few more good years with Doyle.

He wanted a few more good years.

He looked around the prison. Audrey was huddled in a ball on her cot, though whether she was asleep or just miserable Bodie couldn't tell. In the cell beside her Judith was sitting on the wooden chair in her room, her hands clutched together, her head bowed so he couldn't see her face. Bodie hoped that the occasional twitch in her hands was from nerves and not the virus. He liked Judith. Behind her cut-glass accent she was tough and resilient. He hated to think of her falling to the bloody virus. He couldn't see inside the cells beside him, but he could hear Benny and Sally whispering to each other, and he began to wonder just how close the two of them were.

Any musing on that topic was cut short when he heard the door from the guard room open.

"About time, Mullens," he said. "What's the matter? Did you go all the way to China for your cuppa?"

"Think he only got to India," a voice said. Doyle's voice.

"Ray!" He made the bars in two steps. "What are you doing here? Did Cowley send you?"

"Not really," Doyle said, wrinkling his nose as he spoke.

"Not really or not at all?"

"Not at all." Doyle gave him a grimly determined look. "Came to break you out." He jangled a key chain in Bodie's direction.

Bodie's heart gave a little lurch of hope at that, even as his brain told it not to be fucking stupid.

"I don't think that's a good idea, Ray. You've seen what's likely to happen."

"I'm not a complete moron, Bodie." Doyle's voice was sharp, and his expression was hurt. "I'm not just going to let you wander around the countryside on your own. I'm taking you to London."

Across the way, Bodie could see Judith's head snap up, and Audrey stir on her cot.

"What's in London?" Sally said, her voice suddenly hopeful.

"A bloke who says he's got a cure. One of Grace's colleagues." Doyle grimaced. "At least that's what Lily and her mates say. They heard a broadcast on the radio the night of Grace's announcement."

"If there's a cure, why haven't we gone to get it?" Judith's speech was as precise as ever, but Bodie could hear just a bit of wobble in it.

"Cowley didn't want to risk more people to find a cure that might not exist," Doyle said. "He was going to wait until the vaccine proved effective, then send a team to London who were immune."

"Except that didn't quite work out," Bodie said, the bitterness in his voice not at all hidden.

"I'm not waiting for Cowley's approval, Bodie. I'm taking you now."

As plans went, it at least had the potential for success. A pretty fucking small potential, in his opinion, but still, it was better than sitting in this cell, waiting to either turn into a monster or be shot by one of the guards. But there was one problem with the plan.

"Are you going to take us all?" He looked over to where Judith was now standing at the bars of her cell, her expression one of intense concentration, and Audrey was sitting up, pushing her long hair out of her face to reveal eyes rimmed red from crying. He peered to the side, and caught a glimpse of Sally's hands gripping the bars of her cell. When he turned his attention back to Doyle, his partner was looking sheepish.

"I don't think I can, Bodie. I was going to nick a Cortina from the car pool, and it won't hold you all."

"Then nick a bigger car." Taking the others was the right thing to do. Bodie knew that.

"It's not just the car, Bodie."

"Then what is it? Exactly."

It wasn't Doyle who answered him, but Judith. Practical, hard-headed Judith, who was never one to avoid a difficult situation.

"He can't take us all, Bodie. One man with five people, any or all of whom might turn on him? We'd all end up dead."

Doyle looked over at Judith gratefully. But Bodie wasn't about to let him wriggle out of it that easily.

"Then don't take us all. Take a couple of us. Take Audrey and Judith. They're civilians. They don't deserve this."

"Don't be an idiot," Judith snapped. "I had the vaccine right after Scott. I'm probably next up to turn. I'm certainly starting to feel a bit off. And Audrey had the vaccine after me." She turned to the cell beside hers and reached her hand through the bars. "I'm sorry love, but you know it's true." 

Audrey didn't say anything, but she did reach out and take Judith's hand, and Bodie could see her lip tremble.

"It'll be better with just the two of you," Sally said. "You'll have a better chance. You know you will."

Doyle was already fiddling with the keys and opening the door. Bodie took a tentative step outside of the cell, none of this feeling at all right.

"You can come back with the cure," Benny said. "Save us all and be the hero. You'll like that." Benny gave him a slightly crooked smile, one that still couldn't hide the fear underlying it.

Bodie had no answer for that.

"C'mon, Bodie." Doyle started pulling him out of the room. "We've got to get out of here."

"We'll be back," Bodie promised as he was drawn out of the room. Then they were in the guard room, where Mullens and his even more sullen mate where snoring, and then out into the night, with another guard unconscious at their feet.

"Who did for the guards?" Bodie asked.

"I knocked this one out." Doyle prodded the man with his toe. "Grace drugged the two inside."

He looked at Doyle then. He knew they needed to get moving, to get away from the castle before their escape was discovered, but he had a question that needed answering.

"It's not going to matter to them if we bring back the cure, is it?"

He knew that look in Doyle's eye, the slightly frantic, slightly annoyed look that asked why the fuck he had to stop and talk now, why couldn't he just shut the fuck up. He'd had that look more than once himself, he knew, when Doyle had wanted to talk over ethics and he'd only wanted to act.

To his credit, Doyle didn't evade the question. He looked him straight in the eyes and shook his head.

"No. It's not." He bit his lip. "I overheard Grace talking to Cowley. He's going to order all the volunteers killed to prevent the infection spreading in the castle. I couldn't let that happen, Bodie. Not to you."

Doyle reached out and grabbed the front of the light leather jacket he was wearing. Before Bodie knew it, they were wrapped around each other, leather squeaking on leather.

But they couldn't stay here forever, not even for very long.

"C'mon, then." He gave Doyle a quick shove on the arm that was so much less contact than he craved. "Let's go."

Getting out of the castle had been a piece of piss. They'd made their way to the wall and abseiled down with the rope Doyle had left there. Then it had just been a matter of grabbing the packs Doyle had stashed in a bush, hopping in the Cortina and accelerating away from the castle before anyone could think to stop them.

They'd been on the road now for three hours, and Doyle felt shattered in a way that went beyond mere physical exhaustion, though he was that. He was worried about Bodie, sick that he couldn't do anything for the other volunteers, pissed off at Cowley, and just generally sick of this world they'd been tossed into. A world where nothing made sense and a friend could turn into a killing machine in a heartbeat.

At least one thing hadn't changed: Bodie could still sleep in any position, in any situation. He spared a glance to the passenger seat where Bodie was snoring his way across the English countryside, his feet propped up on the dashboard, his face turned slightly towards Doyle. Doyle smiled fondly at the daft sod, a smile that faded quickly as Bodie's face twisted into a brief grimace and his one hand twitched in a way that reminded him of Murphy, of Lynn, of Keith before they'd turned. It was too early, he told himself. The others hadn't turned this soon after having the vaccine. Bodie should have days yet.

Not that they hadn't talked about what to do if he did turn.

They'd barely pulled away from the castle when Bodie had brought it up.

"You'll do what you promised, Doyle? If I turn?"

"You're not going to turn," Doyle had insisted, his teeth gritted.

"But if I do? You'll pull the trigger?"

"I won't have to." He'd reached below the seat then and retrieved the case Grace had given him. "Grace gave me a little present. Lorazepam. Enough to knock you out for a bit."

"Good," Bodie had said, his teeth pulled back in an expression that was more grimace than smile. "Don't you hesitate to use it if you think I'm going."

"And don't you hesitate to tell me if you think you need it."

And that had been it. 

Doyle had told himself that he wouldn't need the drugs, that there was no way Bodie was going to turn before they got to London, but the last half hour the doubt had begun to whittle away at his certainty. Every time Bodie had twitched, had jerked, had moaned in his sleep, he'd wondered if this was it, if this was when he needed to pull out a syringe and jam it into Bodie's thigh. But then Bodie would settle down, and his face would take on that little-boy-lost quality it often got when he was sleeping, and Doyle would tell himself he was borrowing trouble before he needed to.

He accelerated as he saw the signs on the motorway for Manchester. The last time he'd been this way, with Grace and Lily and Stuart, the city had been on fire. He imagined there was nothing left of it now but ash and the steel and brick skeletons of buildings. And the infected, of course. He was sure some of them had found a way to survive the flames. They seemed capable of surviving anything. Anything but a bullet to the head.

A sound at his side took his attention from the road: Bodie again. He snorted, and thrashed, and then sat up straight, awake and blinking and clutching the dash with one hand.

"You okay?" Doyle asked.

There was a long pause before Bodie said anything, and when he did speak, his words didn't ease Doyle's anxiety one bit.

"Pull over."

"What's wrong?"

"Just pull the fuck over, Doyle, can't you?"

He pulled over, his eyes on Bodie's hand the whole time, grasping the dashboard like a claw. Even before the car had come to a stop, he was reaching under his seat for Grace's case.

It started with a dream.

Not the usual sort of dream; more flashes of memories. Bad ones. Memories of that raid in Essex, the one that started everything, or ended everything depending on how you looked at it. Memories of the battle to secure the Whitehall safe zone, of sending out rescue missions to save who they could.

Memories of the fall of Guy's hospital.

Except, this time, when the infected burst into the hospital's lobby, when they started clawing into the crowd, Doyle was at the front of them, his eyes red and wild, his mouth a gaping, bloody maw.

He woke with his heart pounding in his chest, with the feeling of wanting to crawl out of his skin, of wanting to tear into everything around him, and he knew his time had run out.

He knew Doyle had said something, but he couldn't concentrate on what, couldn't concentrate on anything. He gripped the dashboard, as if holding onto it could keep him from doing the unthinkable as he struggled to gain control over his own body.

"Pull over," he finally managed to spit out.

"What's wrong?"

"Just pull the fuck over, Doyle, can't you?"

He felt the car veer over to the shoulder even as he felt his vision go red, even as he could feel something inside him yelling at him to attack, to kill, to feed. He pushed back on the monster, held tight to the dash, and prayed that Doyle was fast enough.

He could hear Doyle scrabbling with the zipper of the case, could see him grabbing a syringe that glittered in the light of the dash.

"No," he said, as he felt his arm lash out at Doyle, catching him across the shoulder. He didn't know who he was talking to, Doyle or himself or the monster inside him. Somehow, Doyle didn't drop the syringe, and he felt a bite in his thigh as the needle plunged into him.

It barely slowed him down.

He could feel the drug in his system, feel it dragging on his limbs, but it didn't stop him from lashing out at Doyle again, this blow catching him on the head, opening up a cut over his eye that left a thin line of blood trickling down his cheek.

Blood. It was what the monster had been waiting for, and Bodie felt even the slim control he'd had over the beast slip as he lunged towards Doyle. Doyle had his back to the car door, and kicked out with one trainer-shod foot, catching him in the chest, even as he fumbled in the case for another syringe.

 _Shoot me, Ray_ , Bodie thought, but the rage was completely overtaking him, making him snarl and twist and hit.

Then there was another bite, in his bicep this time, and he felt the world going dark around him, even as he made one last lunging grab for Doyle.

Doyle stayed pressed back against the door of the car as he watched Bodie's eyes, blood red and manic, roll back in his head, watched him collapse in the seat, his head lolling against the dash. Doyle gave Bodie a poke with his toe before he risked getting close enough to pull the needle out of his bicep, then quickly pulled back again.

He could feel the adrenaline pumping through his body, could taste the fear at the back of his throat. He'd imagined this far too many times in the last few days, Bodie turning, but the reality was worse than anything he'd come up with. Bodie had nearly killed him. And if Grace hadn't given him the sedatives, he'd either have had to shoot Bodie himself and risk the blood spray, or let himself be torn apart.

"Fucking hell."

He picked up Grace's case from where it had landed on the floor and zipped it closed again, noting the way his hands were shaking as he did. Then with a final glance at Bodie, he left the car and stood in the darkness while he waited for his nerves to calm. When he felt the last of the tremors in his hands and his heart rate slow, then he moved.

From the boot, he pulled the things he'd packed hoping he'd never to have to use them: handcuffs and leg restraints. Gingerly opening the passenger door, he snapped the cuffs on Bodie's wrists, then dragged him into the back seat.

"Bloody hell, you weigh a ton," he said to his unconscious partner, trying not to think too hard about what he was doing, what he had to do, until he had Bodie trussed up in the back, arms secured to one door, his feet to the other. It wasn't right, doing this to Bodie. His every instinct screamed that, but he knew it was the only way to give them both a chance of coming out of this alive.

"I'll find Professor Orange," Doyle said as he took his place behind the wheel and looked at Bodie in the rear view mirror. "He'll get you sorted. Promise."

Throwing the car into gear, he sped south into the night.

Doyle made the drive acutely aware not only of his surroundings, of the deserted towns he passed through, of the gradually increasing light as dawn approached, but of every sound Bodie made in the back seat behind him. Every sound, every snuffle, every moan made Doyle tense up, never certain if this was the moment that Bodie was going to fight his way back to consciousness, to become, once again, a homicidal monster.

That finally happened as he reached the edges of London, a low murmur from Bodie rose into a snarl, then a scream. And then Bodie turned into a thrashing demon, pulling at the handcuffs secured to the door and kicking at the other door, until Doyle wasn't sure if he might not managed to tear the car apart. It took only seconds for Doyle to stop the Cortina, grab the syringe he'd carefully prepared with a double dose of Grace's drugs and jam it into Bodie's thigh. To push the plunger until Bodie gave one last scream, and then shuddered and collapsed once again into oblivion.

Doyle got the shaking under control faster this time, hoping that he didn't have to do this so often that it became routine. _You might have to_ , a voice whispered to him. _If you can't find this Orange bloke. If he's dead or disappeared. Or if his cure doesn't work._ Doyle ignored the voice. If he'd wanted to give in to hopelessness, he never would have left the castle. He'd have let Cowley have Bodie shot.

He spared a brief thought for Dumbarton and the other volunteers. He wondered if they had turned yet, or if Cowley had followed through on his intention to kill them all. He shook his head. Best not to think of that. Glancing one last time at Bodie, lolling unconscious in the back, he straightened his shoulders, got back behind the steering wheel, and continued into the city. 

He made a point of keeping to major streets. No point in getting on some little lane he used to take as a shortcut and finding it blocked with debris or turned into a major meeting point for the infected. As he came off the M1, he took Edgeware, in all its various incarnations, straight down and across Marylebone. After being so long in Scotland, the city disturbed him more than he thought possible. He'd been in Glasgow, scrounging for food or supplies, many times, but the emptiness of that city hadn't disturbed him like this. He supposed it was down to familiarity. London was home turf. He knew every corner of it, or had done, but now every wisp of movement made him jump. He'd catch sight of an old newspaper drifting on the wind, or see curtains twitching in a shattered window, and brace himself for an attack by the infected, but it was an attack that never came. He saw no infected, and no survivors either.

He was on Euston Road, approaching the station and the top of Gower Street, when the impossible happened: he heard the sound of an engine. And not just any engine, but a motorcycle engine. He stopped the car in the middle of the road, but kept it running, prepared for a quick escape. He looked back at Bodie—still unconscious but tossing restlessly—and then reached for his gun. He doubted any of the infected could ride a bike, but it never did to make assumptions. And besides, not every uninfected person was to be trusted. Willis' betrayal had taught him that much.

The sound of the motorcycle grew closer and closer, and Doyle found himself tightening his hold on the grip of his pistol, torn between hope and fear. There was a final rev of the bike's engine, and then a Kawasaki tore onto Euston from Gower, its brawny rider clad head to toe in black leather, a black helmet with a full tinted faceshield obscuring his features. Biker Bloke rode towards Doyle and the Cortina, stopping when he was perhaps twenty yards away.

The rider shut off the engine, swung off the bike, and snapped down its kickstand. Then he reached back, unslung an impressive looking shotgun and pointed it straight at Doyle.

"I'm going to have to ask you to get out of the car, mate." The voice was partially muffled by the helmet, but still loud and confident. And very Mancunian. Doyle was suddenly hopeful that he'd found the owner of the mysterious voice Lily and her friends had heard on the radio, the reason he'd come here, the fella with the cure.

Doyle nodded in response to the request, put his weapon carefully on the seat beside him, and then slowly got out of the car, his hands steady and clearly in view.

"What brings you to our fair city?" Biker Bloke asked. He kept his shotgun trained on Doyle and the faceshield of his helmet down. Doyle reckoned it was meant to intimidate him, and it probably would have worked on anyone not trained by CI5.

"I'm looking for someone," Doyle answer simply. "A Professor Orange."

At Orange's name, Biker Bloke's shoulders stiffened and he racked the shotgun.

"What do you want with the Professor?" The menace in his voice was clear enough. Doyle thought that it was a point in Orange's favour that this bloke was so eager to protect him.

"I heard his radio broadcast." Doyle aimed at keeping his voice as calm as possible, even with the primed gun now pointed at him. In spite of this bloke's hard appearance, Doyle suspected he was a civilian. And civilians were dangerous when they were armed and felt threatened. He didn't want to end up a victim to this man's inexperience. Not when Bodie's life hung on the line. "The one that said he had a cure."

Biker Bloke lowered the barrel of the shotgun so it was no longer pointing directly at Doyle. Then he used one hand to push up his faceshield. Behind that imposing mask, he looked younger that Doyle had been expecting, barely out of his teens. He had a dark fringe nearly in his eyes, and Doyle guessed that he was a bit of a cheeky bastard, even though just at the moment he was deadly serious. "And what do you need the cure for? You're not infected." The question was one part curiosity and two parts menace.

"It's not for me." Without taking his eyes off Biker Bloke, Doyle nodded towards the Cortina. "It's for my mate." He shrugged. "He's having a bit of a bad turn." And wasn't that an understatement.

Biker Bloke motioned him towards the Cortina, then followed. Doyle stopped beside the rear door of the car. Bodie was still unconscious, but beginning to thrash against his restraints in a way Doyle didn't like at all. With the doses of lorazepam he'd given him, Bodie should've been out for at least another hour, but here he was, fighting his way to consciousness a mere one hour later.

"Your mate's infected and you've got him in the car with you?" Biker Bloke raised an eyebrow at him. "He must be a bloody good mate."

"He is." Doyle crossed his arms in front of him. "That's why I'm here: for your cure."

"Not my cure," Biker Bloke said without taking his eyes off Bodie. "The Professor's."

"The Professor's cure, then. Bodie needs it."

"It's not easy to knock out someone who's infected. How did you manage it?"

"You speaking from experience?"

"Maybe. How'd you do it?"

"He didn't turn all at once."

Biker Bloke looked up at him, incredulous.

"I've got news for you, sunshine. Everyone turns all at once. Everyone. If you don't think your friend did, you're fucking insane."

"We've got a vaccine." He looked at Bodie again, and realized what a lie that was. "Well, we thought we had a vaccine."

"Not a very fucking good one." Biker Bloke bit his lip. 

"No," Doyle agreed. "It was pretty fucking awful, actually."

"Listen, I know he's Bodie, but what's your name?"

"Doyle."

"Well, Doyle, I'm Rob." Rob put the safety on his shotgun and slid it back in the holster he'd jury-rigged for it on his back. "You can follow me."

"Follow you where?" Doyle called to Rob as he jogged back to his bike.

"Where you wanted to go. To see the Professor."

"Where is he?"

"You can't miss it." Then Rob was on his bike and roaring away, leaving Doyle to scramble into the Cortina and follow, swearing under his breath.

"I hope Professor Orange isn't as big a twat as you are, Rob," Doyle said under his breath as he followed the boy down Euston.

Rob was certainly right that he couldn't miss Professor Orange's residence. As soon as he turned the corner onto Taviton Street, the old Georgian townhouse stood out, its windows protected with welded iron bars, its entrance surrounded with a circle of razor wire and a giant blast door secured with a sturdy padlock. The elegant sign for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine screwed to the front looked out of place beside all that hardware.

"Howard's good with a welding torch," Rob said with a smile as he stepped off his bike with his helmet under his arm. "He used to work in a body shop before he joined the army. And he knows where the military stored its choice bits. That's come in handy."

"Who's Howard?"

"A friend of the Professor's. You'll meet him soon enough." Rob fiddled with a chain around his neck and revealed a key that clicked open the padlock. "Let's get your mate in before any of the locals decide they're interested."

Doyle unlocked the restraints binding Bodie to the car doors, then they hauled him into the building. Rob re-locked the padlock, before joining Doyle and the unconscious Bodie inside.

The interior of the building was what Doyle would have expected in this area: a foyer with a curved stairway disappearing up to the first floor. Muted daylight came in through the barricaded windows, but not nearly enough. As Doyle watched, Rob turned on a battery-operated lantern that cast a homely glow inside.

There was a clattering on the stairs, and Doyle looked up to see a tall, curly-haired bloke with more than a few days' growth of beard descending. He was wearing what looked like the trousers from an army uniform and a black leather jacket that was a twin to Rob's. He had a metal contraption slung on his back. 

"Who are your friends, Rob?"

"The upright one's Doyle. The horizontal one is Bodie." Rob turned to Doyle. "This is Howard. He's the one who did the decorating out front."

Howard grinned in response.

"Is that a flame thrower?" Doyle had seen a flame thrower in action once, when they'd been on training exercises with some of Bodie's old mob. He'd come away with a healthy respect for what a concentrated stream of fire could do to a target.

"Yeah." Howard gave him a rather predatory grin. "Never hurts to make it a bit hot for the locals." He nodded in Bodie's direction. "He infected?"

Rob nodded. "Muggins here is looking for the cure for his mate."

"Jay will love that," Howard said in a tone that made it clear he was less than thrilled himself.

"What will I love?" 

Doyle had been concentrating so much on Howard and his impressive armament that he hadn't heard the two men coming through from the back corridor. 

Professor Orange wasn't at all what Doyle had expected. He was as tall as Howard, but rake thin, his body all angles and lines. He kept his hair trimmed as short as Bodie, and behind a round pair of John Lennon glasses, his eyes were sharp and intelligent. He was wearing a dark shirt and trousers, both tailored to show the lean fitness of his frame.

Behind him, the other man seemed to like keeping to the shadows of the room. He was smaller, slighter, and much younger, and even in the dim light of the room was wearing a pair of dark glasses. But Doyle's scrutiny of them was stopped by Howard's next words.

"Rob's found you another test subject."

"He's not a test subject." Doyle spat out the words, and put himself between Bodie and the Professor. "That's what got him in this state in the first place." He hadn't pulled Bodie out of the castle only to have yet another scientist experiment on him. He just hadn't.

Professor Orange didn't flinch from Doyle's anger. He only held up one hand in a calming gesture.

"I'm sure that's not what Howard meant to say." He kept his eyes, blue and calm, focused on Doyle. "I'm sure Howard meant to say 'patient,' didn't you How?"

"Yeah, that's what I meant." Howard actually sounded chastened, which was interesting. He didn't look the sort to defer to anyone, let alone a scientist.

Doyle took a deep breath and allowed himself to relax slightly.

"I'm sorry, but I don't want anyone experimenting on Bodie. Not again."

"Not again?" Professor Orange pursed his lips in what looked like curiosity. "Who was experimenting on him in the first place?"

"A friend of mine. A friend of yours, too. Grace Edwards. She thought she'd found a vaccine but she was wrong."

"Grace?" Orange drew in a sharp breath. "Grace is alive?"

"In Scotland, yeah. She helped us get away, gave me the drugs to knock out Bodie if he turned. And she told me to bring you back with me, if I could."

"We don't need to go to Scotland," Howard said, his voice as defensive as his posture.

"Not now, Howard." Orange held up a hand without taking his eyes off Doyle. "Time enough to discuss that later. Grace is alive?" He blinked several times. "I thought she was dead."

"She thought the same thing about you. But she's not. I found her in Derby. Got her to Scotland, to Dumbarton castle. There's a lot of us there, including a few scientists. Grace was leading the team looking for a vaccine. She thought she'd found it. Bodie was one of the poor sods who volunteered to test it. But it wasn't a vaccine; it was the virus in disguise."

"That's always the danger." Orange stared off into the distance for a moment, lost in a memory that looked anything but pleasant.

"Your cure's not like that, is it?" Doyle asked, pulling Orange back to the present.

"No, it's not. It definitely works." The Professor sounded more resigned than triumphant. Mind you, if these four had been stuck here, surrounded by the infected for the last few months, resigned might be the best he could expect.

"I don't want to sound ungrateful, but do you have proof?" 

"Oh, I have proof," Orange said, though his expression was more subdued that Doyle would have expected of someone who had the cure to the virus. When he didn't seem inclined to offer anything else, Doyle pushed him.

"If it's all the same to you, I'd like to see your proof before you go sticking another needle into Bodie. The last medicine that got tried on him didn't work out so well, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Don't you go insulting the Professor," Rob said.

"I'm sure Mr Doyle didn't intend any insult," Orange said, his voice calm and placating. "Mark." He turned to the slight young man who had worked his way around the edges of the room and was now standing behind Rob. "Would you show our guest the proof?"

Mark walked slowly forward, biting his lip, until he was beside Rob. Rob placed a hand protectively on his shoulder.

"Go on, Markie," Rob said, his voice far more gentle than Doyle would have expected from such a bolshie bloke. "I'm right here."

Mark turned back to Doyle, raised one hand, and carefully took off the dark glasses shielding his eyes. He looked down, blinked several times, and then deliberately looked up at Doyle.

Doyle flinched, and his hand went automatically to the weapon in his holster. One of the boy's eyes was a brilliant clear blue, but the other one...the other one was the inflamed, violent red you only saw in the infected.

Several things happened at once. Doyle pulled his gun and pointed it at Mark, Mark cringed away from him, one arm raised in defence, and Rob placed himself solidly between Doyle and his friend.

"Put the gun away," Rob said, his voice firm and implacable.

"He's infected," Doyle said, reliving what had happened to Murphy, to Bodie all over again. He remembered the blood and screams and panic after Murphy's eyes had changed. He remembered the red craziness of Bodie's eyes when he'd turned this morning.

"He's not." Rob had his shotgun aimed right at Doyle's head.

"But..."

"Mark is cured," Professor Orange spoke up and moved into the centre of the confrontation, putting himself between Doyle and Rob and Mark. "He is completely free of the virus. Unfortunately, the cure couldn't reverse all of the effects of the disease. His eye is the most obvious of those effects."

Doyle kept his eyes firmly on Mark, even as Mark slid further behind Rob and slipped his glasses back on. He looked back at Rob, at the fierce determination in his frame, and he saw something he recognized. Rob would protect Mark at all costs, just as he would protect Bodie. But he could also tell that Rob had a fundamental honesty, that he would do what had to be done. It was to Rob he addressed his next words.

"You absolutely believe he's cured?"

"Yeah." Rob clenched his jaw and his lips thinned to a narrow line. "I do."

"And if he ever turns?"

"He won't."

"But if he does?"

Without breaking eye contact with Doyle, Rob reached back his free hand, the one not holding a gun. Mark took the offered hand, and then moved to stand at Rob's side, the two of them clearly taking strength from each other.

"I'll kill him myself," Rob said, his voice grown quiet, then he looked down at Mark, his green eyes looking suspiciously wet.

"I made him promise me that," Mark said firmly, the first words he'd said all this time. His voice wasn't at all what Doyle had expected. It was lower, huskier. And stronger. "I don't want to hurt anyone. Ever."

Doyle thought back to his own promise to Bodie, wrung from him at such cost to them both, and he knew that he understood these boys—the two of them really were still boys—and the terrible things they'd gone through. And more, he realized he trusted them. They were telling the truth. And that might mean they really could help Bodie.

Keeping his eyes locked with Rob's, he put the safety back on his weapon and placed it deliberately back into his holster, then raised his hands. Only after he'd stood there, vulnerable, for what must have been close to a minute did Rob lower his own gun.

"How did you save him?" Doyle finally asked. He knew too well how fast someone turned once they were exposed to the virus. How difficult it would be to save someone without risking yourself. The only reason he'd been able to contemplate running with Bodie was the relative slowness of Bodie's turning. And he knew time was not on his side.

"Mark and Rob were out on a scavenging run when they were attacked by an infected," Orange said. He nodded at Rob, who continued.

"Mark got bit. I didn't wait around. I killed the infected, knocked Mark out just as he was going over, tied him up, and got him back to the Professor."

"Rob asked me to use the cure on Mark." 

"I begged him, was more like," Rob said. His voice was calm, but Doyle could hear the desperation lurking beneath the surface. "I knew it was Mark's only chance."

"I hadn't yet had the chance to test the cure. But Mark was dead one way or another if I didn't use it. There was nothing to lose."

"And it worked." Mark looked less hesitant now, more secure. "I know what the eye looks like, but I'm not one of them." He nodded at Bodie. "Professor Orange can help your friend. If you'll let him."

Doyle nodded, then turned to Orange.

"Can you? Can you help Bodie?"

"I can't guarantee anything," Orange said. "We haven't tried it on anyone else, and I don't know what effect your Grace's vaccine will have on my antiviral drug. But let's see what we can do, hey?"

Mark hung back as Howard, Rob, the Professor, and Doyle hefted Doyle's mate and moved further into the building. It wasn't that he was afraid of Bodie--the man was sedated and as safe as he could be at the moment--but he was afraid of Doyle. Doyle would have killed him, if Rob and the Professor hadn't intervened. He was certain of that. And he wouldn't have entirely blamed him. There were times that he looked in the mirror and thought they'd made a mistake keeping him alive. Times when he was convinced he was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off and kill his friends. But the Professor had got him to go over the test results himself, to prove that there was none of the virus left in his system.

He'd only just started his Ph.D. when the virus struck, but he knew his stuff. He knew what to look for. And he knew the tests showed he was free of the virus, no matter what his eye looked like.

Still, it was one thing to know you were healthy, and another to look like a monster. He suspected he was going to be fighting the battle to prove he wasn't infected for the rest of his life, however short that was.

They reached the isolation area at the back of the institute, a large room with a raft of equipment surrounding a treatment bed with heavy duty arm and leg restraints welded to the sides and a barred door. Mark slowed as the others entered and put Bodie on the bed. He supposed he should be grateful for this place. It was where the Professor had cured him, after all. But he could only associate it with the pain and fury and hate that the virus had made him feel.

"I don't like to see him trussed up like that," Doyle said as Howard and Jason snapped the restraints onto Bodie.

"You'd like it less if he got free," Howard said matter-of-factly as he fastened the restraint on one of Bodie's ankles. Howard was always the one who could cut through everyone else's agonizing and bullshit. It's probably what made him work so well with the Professor. Professor Orange would over-analyse everything, and then Howard would say what really needed to be said.

Once Bodie was firmly secured, Mark edged in, ready to assist the Professor, but firmly staying to the borders of the room.

"Mark, could you get me the antiviral?" The Professor was occupied with examining Bodie, checking his eyes, his skin, his heart and respiration. Mark went to the generator-powered fridge that contained their precious stockpile of the cure, pulled out a clear bag of the stuff, and attached the tubes as the Professor inserted a cannula into Bodie's vein, drew six sample bottles of blood, and then attached the IV bag of the antiviral drug. Mark took the vials of blood and started to prep them for tests.

"How long will this take?" Doyle was hovering nervously over his friend, as if he was afraid to get too close but didn't want to stray too far. Mark was familiar with that look. Rob had had that look for the first few days after Mark had woken up in this room.

"I've only got a sample of one to go by, but Mark was over the worst in twenty-four hours. And I'm hoping Bodie will improve more quickly, with Grace's vaccine in his veins."

"Good."

"In the meantime, you should get some rest. You look exhausted."

"No." Doyle shook his head emphatically. "I'm staying with him."

That was a look Mark was familiar with as well, that grim determination. Rob had worn that particular look for weeks, even after all the tests had showed Mark was fully cured. No one had been able to shift him from Mark's side during that time, not even Howard.

The Professor looked at Mark and raised an eyebrow. Mark shrugged and shook his head quickly. There was no use arguing with the man. They might as well get used to working around him.

"Fine," the Professor said, his voice clipped and professional. "But mind you don't get in our way."

Doyle nodded his agreement, and then made sure he did exactly that as they set about attaching ECG leads and an oxygen monitor to his partner.

When there was nothing else they could do, the Professor looked back at Doyle.

"Mark and I need to run tests on your friend's blood. Give ourselves a baseline for the viral load in his system, make sure he's getting better, not worse. Howard or Rob will be here if you need anything."

"Thanks." Though his expression was still grim, Mark could hear the gratitude in his voice. He might not be a bad bloke, if he ever got over looking at Mark like he was a lab experiment gone wrong.

The Professor was heading to the door when Doyle spoke again.

"Could I ask you a question?"

"You can ask. I'll answer if I can."

"Why haven't you cured anyone else? Why just Mark?"

Mark inhaled quickly, and he could see Howard flinch in remembered pain, could see Rob's mouth go thin and the Professor's eyes narrow. After a long moment, the Professor finally responded.

"We tried--" The Professor stopped and cleared his throat. "We tried capturing someone who was infected to give them the cure."

"Then what happened?"

Mark wished the man would drop it, that he'd just shut up, but it wasn't like he could know what he was stepping into.

"There used to be more of us," the Professor said simply. "More soldiers from Howard's platoon, more grad students from our lab, more friends of Rob's. But we lost them."

"How?" Doyle's eyes had widened, and it was clear he realized the mistake he'd made, even if his curiosity had him pushing forward.

"We managed to corner one of the infected, to contain him. So we thought. But we didn't contain him enough." The Professor's tone was remarkably even, considering what he was talking about. Mark still didn't like thinking about that evening himself. It tended to make him break out in a cold sweat. "He'd killed four of us before we had time to react. We lost the others trying to correct our mistakes."

"Oh." He didn't push the Professor further, which Mark reckoned was a point in Doyle's favour.

"We'll be in the lab. Let us know if you need anything." Then the Professor was sweeping out of the room, with Mark trailing behind him. The Professor's back was straight and tall until they were well out of the treatment room. Then he allowed his spine to sag a little bit, and Mark could see his hands shaking at his side. Mark was just about to ask if he was okay, when the Professor stopped and turned to face Mark.

"Are you all right, Mark?"

And wasn't that just like the Professor, worried about everyone else when he was as shattered as the rest of them?

"Yes, Professor." Mark nodded and gave what he hoped was a convincing smile.

"Good." The Professor returned his smile with a firm nod. "Then let's go find out how badly off Mr Bodie is."

It was like being trapped in a cage with a rabid wolf, a snarling beast whose muzzle was stained with blood. But the cage was his own skull, and the wolf was the virus, a creature that was not only trying to devour his mind, but to control his body as well.

Each time the sedatives hit his system the beast would calm, would be reduced to pacing the cage. But then as the drugs wore off it would be back, stronger than ever, snapping at him and pushing his body to satisfy its thirst for blood. 

Over and over the cycle went, until Bodie wasn't sure how much more he could take, was tempted to surrender to the beast, to let it ride his skin and do what it would, except that he knew—he _knew_ \--Doyle was out there. Doyle was fighting for him. Doyle was looking for the cure, had possibly found the cure. Doyle would save him, but only if there was something left to save. Only if he didn't let the beast devour him.

On he fought, until he felt the beast finally weaken, felt its pace slow, felt it falter and fall. And then he was fighting his way to consciousness, emerging, finally, gasping into the light.

"How are you, Sunshine?"

It was Doyle's voice. He opened his eyes and saw Doyle smiling down at him. He tried to smile back, but his muscles didn't seem to be paying any attention to what he was telling them.

"Bodie?" Doyle's smile faded and he saw worry replace the relief. He didn't want Doyle worrying over him, so he tried to reach out for his hand, only to find his wrists bound. He looked down and found he was lying in some sort of hospital bed, with his wrists and ankles all restrained. The rational part of his mind told him yeah, of course they'd tied him up--they weren't about to let someone infected wander about on his own--but he didn't seem to be paying attention to the rational part. Reason could fuck itself. He just wanted to be _free_.

He pulled at the padded leather binding his wrists, his ankles, and tried to get his mouth working well enough to tell Doyle he wanted out of here, but the words came out as a moaning snarl, the sort of sound the infected made.

But he wasn't infected, goddamn it. Not anymore. Or at least not mostly. And he didn't want Doyle looking at him like that anymore, like he wasn't entirely human. So he stopped struggling and took a deep breath and made one more attempt to speak.

"Doyle." It came out as a croak, but it was an actual word. He tried again. "Where?" Not a whole sentence, but he was going to take what he could get.

"London. We're in London. I found Grace's friend, Professor Orange. He really does have a cure."

He looked around the room. It looked something like a standard hospital room, but it seemed a bit off, beyond the restraints on the bed. What machines there were seemed to be run by a generator chugging away in the corner, and it had no windows at all, giving it a bunker-like feeling.

"How long?" That was better, two whole words. He swallowed and tried again. "How long have I been out?" A sentence! Surely the effort that had taken should earn him a place on the birthday honours list. If the Queen was in any shape to hand out such things and not shambling around Buckingham Palace looking to rip someone's throat out, that is.

"Four days." Doyle frowned, and Bodie could see the worry in his expression. "They thought it would only take a day to work. They were all getting a bit concerned. I told them you were just lazy and took four times as long to do anything."

"They?" Bodie ignored the implied slur against his person. "Who are they?"

"Professor Orange and his team." Doyle nodded at a corner of the room and Bodie's eyes tracked the movement over to a young man standing there, his small frame swamped by too-large clothing, his eyes hidden by a pair of dark glasses and a mop of sandy hair. "Mark was one of the professor's grad students before the virus hit."

"'lo," Mark said, his voice quiet and croaky.

"Mark, could you get the Professor?"

Mark's head bobbed in acquiescence, then he was gone from the room.

"Odd little bloke," Bodie said, proud that the words were coming with less effort, but noticing when Doyle winced at his choice of words.

"You have no idea. But he's a good kid." Doyle took a firm hold of his hand. "How are you feeling?"

"Better than I have been. But I've still got a bastard headache behind me eyes." He squeezed Doyle's hand and looked firmly in his eyes. "I didn't...do anything while I was gone, did I?" He couldn't say the words, but he could tell from Doyle's eyes that he didn't have to.

"No." Doyle shook his head firmly, his mouth a tense line. "I sedated you in the car, and they've kept you under ever since."

"Good." He didn't remember doing anything he'd regret while the beast had control, but he'd wanted to make sure. While he remembered it all, things hadn't seemed entirely real. That issue settled, he blinked and took a good look at Doyle. "You look like shit, mate." 

And he really did. There were dark circles under his eyes and his skin had a greyish look of exhaustion.

"I'm not the one who came down with the Rage virus."

"No, you're not. So, what's your excuse?"

"Mr Doyle has been at your side for the past four days. I think he's earned the right to look like shit."

Bodie turned to the newcomer sweeping into the room, with Mark and another two men behind him. The man who had spoken was tall, thin and bespectacled, and didn't seem like the sort you could get anything past. Bodie wasn't quite sure if he'd get on with Cowley, or if they'd spend all their time trying to outmanoeuvre each other. His voice was a pleasant to tenor, his accent all Manchester.

"Professor Orange, I presume."

"You presume right. How are you feeling, Mr Bodie?"

"My head hurts, but I'm not feeling homicidal just at the moment. That's an improvement."

"Indeed." Orange's mouth twitched in what might have been a smile, and then he raised an eyebrow in Doyle's direction. "Mr Bodie is awake. Are you ready to fulfill your half of the bargain?"

"It's just Bodie. And what the hell are you talking about? What bargain?" He held Doyle's hand more tightly, fearful of what Doyle might have agreed to in order to save him.

"It's nothing ominous. I just agreed to let Doyle stay with you until you woke up as long as he agreed to rest once that happened. He's gone without more than an occasional catnap for four days now."

"'Ang on," Doyle blurted out. "Give us a minute." 

There was a part of Bodie, a very significant part, that wanted to squeeze Doyle's hand and never let it go. But another, smaller, more rational part could see the sense in Orange's insistence. Ray did look like he was at the end of his strength.

"Go on, Ray. I'm not going anywhere. And you'll be more use once you've had some sleep."

He could see Doyle mustering an argument about how he was fine and he didn't need any bloody sleep. Bodie was about to give him a well-needed bollocking, but Orange got there first.

"If you don't go willingly, I've told Howard and Rob to drag you down the hall, and tie you to the bed."

"I'd like to see them try." Nothing made Ray stroppier than being told he had to do something. Even when it was something he really should do.

"C'mon, Ray, you'll be no good to anyone until you've had some sleep. And besides, I think the big, scruffy bloke might be able to take you."

The big scruffy bloke gave Bodie a wry smile, even as the younger bloke beside him puffed up his chest and tried to look impressive.

"Howard's a pussycat," Doyle said. "It's Rob you've got to watch out for."

The younger bloke, Rob, gave them a wide, slightly unhinged grin.

"I used to get into bar fights for fun," Rob said.

"I'll bet you did." Rob looked a right nutter, but one Bodie instinctively liked. Howard looked a likable sort, too. His bearing, not to mention his uniform trousers, told Bodie he was military.

"Were you army?" he asked Howard.

"2 PARA."

"Impressive."

"You?"

"SAS."

"Nice."

"If you two are quite done with the mutual admiration society, could you please make sure Mr Doyle gets some sleep? I have a patient to examine." Orange seemed a bit tetchy at him paying attention to Howard.

"I'm going." Doyle gave his hand one last squeeze and then let go of it. "Mind you wake me up if Bodie needs me."

"We will."

With one last glance at Bodie, Doyle left, with Howard and Rob behind him. Howard gave Orange a wink on the way out. Definitely interesting.

Once the others were gone, Orange and Mark got to work. They listened to Bodie's chest and looked at his eyes. They drew blood and took a scraping from inside his cheek. Then Orange held his head in place while Mark stuck a needle in his eye and withdrew a small sample of fluid. Bodie immediately decided he'd rather face Macklin for a month than go through that again.

Orange clucked and t'sked and frowned, with Mark following behind, passing him equipment and making notes. And then it was over.

"Am I going to live?" The joke wasn't as funny as it had been in his head.

"We all die eventually, Mr Bodie."

"I told you, it's just Bodie. Is my eventually going to be sooner than yours?"

"I don't know." As answers went, it left a lot to be desired. "We'll need to check your blood and the other samples. You're not responding quite as we'd expected."

"I take it you've cured someone else. Otherwise you wouldn't know what to expect."

"Yes." Orange nodded at Mark. The kid came closer, blew the hair out of his face, and then removed his dark glasses. Bodie found himself looking at one blue eye and one red, the sight strangely compelling.

"Do my eyes look like that?"

"Not quite." Mark had been almost silent through the exam, and his voice seemed rough from disuse. "They're more pink than red at the moment."

"You're completely cured?"

"Yes."

"Do you think I am?"

"Like the Professor said, I don't know." Mark shrugged. "How do you feel?"

"I feel fine," the response was automatic. Never admit weakness, that's what life had taught him.

"How do you feel _here_?" Mark pointed to his head.

He stopped to think, and felt the beast stir inside him, a sleeping monster twitching in its dreams. But he didn't want to admit that yet, so he reverted to an old interrogation technique: when you don't want to answer a question, ask one.

"How did you feel?" he asked Mark.

"Before or after I was cured?"

"Both."

Mark bit his lip, looked down at the floor, and folded his arms around himself in a gesture that was clearly defensive. Bodie almost told him not to bother, that he didn't really want to know—after all, he didn't know what the kid had gone through, if he'd killed anyone, turned anyone while he was infected--but he didn't. Because this wasn't just a delaying tactic. Bodie really _did_ need to know. So instead, he lay back and waited. 

"When I was infected, it was almost like I'd been taken over, like the virus had its own personality. Like it was pushing me to become it, if that makes any sense." He paused and looked up at Bodie, a plea for understanding on his face.

"That's how I felt," Bodie said with a nod. "It was like being two people: one was me, and one was a monster."

"Yeah." Mark's voice had grown fainter, so Bodie had to strain to hear it.

"Can you still feel it?"

Mark frowned and shook his head.

"No. When I woke up in this room," he stopped and looked around for a moment, as if he'd forgotten where he was, "the virus was gone. But I remember before that. I remember wanting to destroy everything. I remember wanting to kill Rob." He blinked several times, and then a shiver racked his body. "Don't want to think about it anymore."

"Do you still feel the monster, Bodie?" Orange asked, his eyes intently focused on Bodie.

"Yeah." He pursed his lips, wishing he could answer differently. "I do. I feel like the thing is still inside me. Like it's gone to sleep, but it's still there." 

Orange frowned at him.

"I don't suppose there's any way you can remove these." He rattled the restraints on his wrist.

"I'm afraid not. Not until we're sure the virus has truly cleared your system."

"If it makes you feel any better, they kept me tied up for a week." Mark laughed, a game attempt at lightening the mood that almost worked.

"We'll run tests on your blood, see what's happening with the virus."

"And then you'll let me know? No matter what?"

"We'll let you know. No matter what." Orange patted him on the leg. "You should sleep now. We'll send back Rob or Howard to keep an eye on you."

"I've already been asleep too long," Bodie said, but even as he spoke the words he could feel a wave of fatigue rise up and crash over him. His eyes drifted shut before the other two men had left the room, and he floated off to sleep listening to the sound of their footsteps fade down the hall, all the while hoping the monster inside him would continue to sleep as well.

Mark made his way down the corridor to the area where they'd all set up rooms for sleeping. Before the Rage virus, when this had been UCL's tropical disease department, it had all been offices, but since they'd taken refuge here, after the disastrous attempted evacuation, the desks and bookshelves had been moved out and now it was all cots and sleeping bags.

More cots and sleeping bags than they needed, just at the moment. Mark shuddered as he walked past the room Howard's captain had used before that bloody stupid attempt to capture one of the infected. There were nearly a dozen abandoned rooms, each one a reminder of a friend or colleague lost on that awful day. It was to one of those abandoned rooms he headed, drawn by the muted voices of Rob and Howard.

He found the two of them standing over a sleeping Doyle, looking at the unconscious man with concern.

"He's out, then?" A daft question, but he wasn't sure what else to say.

"He barely made it here on his own," Howard said. "He put up a good front until we left the treatment room, but then he was asleep on his feet."

"Bodie's out too. One minute he was talking to us, the next it was like someone had turned off his switch." He bit his lip in concern.

"You did a lot of sleeping too, Markie," Rob said. "When you were getting over your case of the zombie flu."

"I do wish you wouldn't call it that. It's not influenza, and the infected aren't zombies."

"I love it when you get all scientific." Rob shot him a wide grin, even as Howard rolled his eyes.

"Anyway, I didn't come here to argue about virus naming conventions. The Professor asked me to get one of you to watch over Bodie. Just in case."

"I'll go." Howard moved towards the door. "Once he wakes up, it'll be nice to have a proper soldier to talk again."

Rob's response to that was a two-fingered salute, which was no doubt what Howard had expected. He returned the compliment as he left the door.

"What are you up to, Mark?"

"Back to the lab to help the Professor with the tests on Bodie."

"Should have known." Rob pulled a face. "You and the bloody science stuff."

"The bloody science stuff saved me," Mark said softly.

"I know." Rob looked suddenly stricken. He moved in and wrapped Mark in his arms, letting his chin rest on Mark's head. "Don't mind me. I'm just jealous. I never made it past third form science myself."

It was hard to stay mad a Rob, not when he was supplying a cuddle. So Mark just gave him a swat and reluctantly pulled away.

"I've got to get back before the Professor needs me."

"I think I'll go stand guard on the roof. See if any of the _zombies_ have got cheeky again."

Mark knew who had got cheeky, and it wasn't the infected. 

"Mind you take care," he said, giving Rob a peck on the cheek.

"Mind _you_ take care," Rob said with feeling. "I'm not the one mucking about with a deadly virus."

"We don't muck about," Mark said as he headed out into the corridor. "We're trained professionals."

More corridors, more walking, and he came to the isolation lab. Mark shrugged into his isolation suit, stepped through the door, and found the Professor bent over his lab bench, a frown creasing his brow.

"Something wrong?"

It was a sign of how hard he'd been concentrating on the problem in front of him that the Professor jumped at his voice. He looked up at Mark and blinked several times before answering, as if he was making his way back from a great distance.

"His viral load is higher than I was expecting. I don't know if our antiviral is doing its job."

"If it wasn’t, he wouldn't be coherent."

"If it was, he wouldn't still feel the virus inside him. But why isn't it doing its job? That's the question we need to answer."

And so they spent the next few hours trying to answer that very question. To find out if the virus had mutated enough that their drug couldn't target it completely, or if the time their cure was taking with Bodie was just part of the natural variation that happened between individuals. They were hoping for the latter even as they began to fear it was more the former.

"It must be that damned vaccine," the Professor said after they hit yet another dead end. "I wish I knew what direction Grace had taken with it." He sighed. "I think taking Mr Doyle up on his invitation to go to Scotland might be our best bet. We're living on borrowed time here anyway. It's only a matter of time before the infected break through our defences."

Mark felt his shoulders tighten, and his stomach flutter. Scotland meant travelling the length of an infected England. Scotland meant dealing with other people, and not just their small circle. People who might look at his eye and think he was a monster, just like Doyle had at first.

But he didn't say anything, because the Professor was right. They _were_ living on borrowed time here. And they could make faster progress on their research with Grace involved. It would be nice to see Grace again.

He opened his mouth to share his thoughts on the matter when there was a banging on the window that separated the lab from the corridor. He turned his head to see Howard banging on the window, his mouth a thinner line than usual, his expression panicked.

Howard didn't do panicked, and that, more than anything, put a spike of fear through Mark's heart.

"You have to come," Howard shouted. "He's turning again."

"Christ," the Professor said, as he and Mark both moved to the lab's airlock and struggled out of their isolation suits.

As he slept, he felt the wolf inside his skull begin to stir. He ignored it at first, hoping that if he didn't pay attention to it, it wouldn't pay attention to him. But then he could feel it awaken, feel it stretch its muscles, feel its hackles rise and its muzzle pull back in a snarl.

When it finally attacked, he was ready for it, bracing himself to hold out against the beast, to not let it win control. But it was stronger than him, he knew that. It was only a matter of time before it won.

He fought his way up through the black waters of sleep, struggling to gain consciousness before the beast had him by the throat. He finally made it as he felt the beast make a shredding swipe at his mind.

He felt his arch back violently, felt his jaw clench and his hands claw at air.

"Bodie!" Howard. That was Howard. Howard was with the 2 PARA. He was tough. He could do what needed to be done.

"Need help," he gasped out between spasms. "Get help."

"I'll get the Professor," Howard said. Part of Bodie's mind registered the alarm in Howard's voice. The other part, the beast, saw him only as prey, quarry to be run down, meat to be devoured.

"No!" Bodie screamed as Howard began to move out of the room. "Not the Professor. Doyle." Doyle knew what to do if it came to this, if he turned. Doyle had _promised_. "Get Doyle!"

Then Howard was gone, and Bodie was left alone in the room, alone in his head with a monster that was systematically tearing apart his mind.

It was a measure of how absolutely exhausted he was that when Mark shook him awake Doyle very nearly shot him. Normally if he was woken from a dead sleep, he came awake immediately and could evaluate if the person in the room with him was an enemy agent, a friend, or just his partner pratting around. This time his body moved without his brain engaged and he only became fully aware when he realized he was holding a primed pistol to Mark's head.

"It's Bodie," Mark was shouting, his hands held defensively up in front of him. "Bodie asked for you."

That woke him up faster than anything. He snapped the safety on the weapon.

"Is he all right?"

"No." Mark shook his head. "He started having seizures. He's turning, Doyle."

"Fuck." The cure hadn't worked. Bodie was turning, and he was going to have to follow through on his horrible promise. But he would do it. He had no other choice. He grabbed the holster that someone—Howard?—had put on the table beside his cot, strapped it on, and jammed the pistol in it. "You're going to have to lead the way, Mark. I've got no fucking clue how I even got here."

Mark gave him one sympathetic look, and then began guiding the way through corridors. He heard Bodie before they reached the treatment room. Bodie's voice was hoarse, and making a noise that wasn't entirely human. Doyle took a deep breath, tensed his muscles, and entered the room.

It was worse than when Bodie had turned in the car. Then, Doyle had been focused so much on sedating him and not being torn apart that he had only barely paid attention to how horrifically wrong Bodie looked. This time, the wrongness was unavoidable. He was straining against the restraints on his wrists and ankles so hard that Doyle could see the tendons standing out on his arms and in his neck. It was a wonder he hadn't torn the IV line out of his arm. As Doyle watched, he had another seizure and his back arched cruelly, even as his eyes rolled briefly back in his head. And those eyes…they were even redder than they'd been in the car, redder than Mark's one bad eye, redder even than he remembered Murphy's eyes being. He was turned. He was lost.

But then something even more horrible happened. He spoke.

"Doyle." His voice was the scrape of clashing gears, the rasp of tearing metal. It wasn't Bodie's voice, and yet it was, and that was the most awful thing at all.

"I'm here, Bodie."

"Love you." 

"Love you too, Bodie." And he did, more than ever. And he didn't care if he was admitting it in front of Mark and Howard and Professor Orange. He'd have admitted it in front of Cowley himself.

"Remember," Bodie gasped out. "Your promise."

"I remember." His fucking promise. The promise he hoped he'd never have to keep. But Bodie needed him to, so he would. 

Stilling the tremors in his hand, he reached carefully for his weapon and pulled it from his holster. He thought he saw Bodie smile before another seizure took hold of him, and he took that as a sign that he was doing the right thing. But apparently no one else in the room saw it the same way. Mark let out a wordless cry, Howard struggled to get around all the equipment blocking Doyle from him, and Professor Orange moved to stand right in front of the barrel of his gun.

"Move, Professor." This was hard enough without them trying to stop him. "I know what I have to do. I promised him."

"It's not the only way. We think we can still save him. If we go to Scotland." Orange was interrupted by a horrible wail from Bodie that did nothing to convince Doyle that he knew what he was talking about.

"Mark, would you sedate him." Orange snapped out the order, and the boy pushed a syringe of clear liquid into Bodie's IV line. The sudden silence was almost worse than the sounds Bodie had produced.

"You said the cure would work the last time. You could be wrong this time. You could be torturing him for nothing."

"Or we could save him." Orange's voice was calm and firm. "But you'll never know if you pull that trigger."

Fucking hell, the hope was almost worse than the despair. But while there was hope of saving him, he couldn't shoot Bodie.

Slowly, he lowered his gun to his side, locked the safety, and put it back in his holster.

"Okay," he said, the gun at his side feeling even heavier than usual. "We go to Scotland. You and Grace fix the cure, and we all live happily ever after."

"Yes." Orange nodded.

"Or you don't fix the cure, Bodie stays infected, and I still end up putting a bullet in his head."

Howard winced and Mark drew in a sharp, hissing breath, but Orange, to his credit, didn't so much as flinch. He kept looking at Doyle with that calm steady gaze of his and he nodded once more.

"That's possible, but I'll tell you one thing. I don't intend to fail."

That shouldn't have been a comfort. No one intended to fail. Doyle was sure the idiots who'd developed the Rage virus hadn't intended to fail, hadn't intended to infect all of Britain with their bloody disease. But somehow, Doyle believed Orange, and he felt the weight pressing down on him ease up just a bit.

"Right, then. Let's get going."

"The sun sets in an hour. We'll leave tomorrow at first light. That should get us to Scotland before dark, or very near."

"First light, then."

It was, Doyle reflected, going to be a very long night.

Once the decision to leave had been made, Mark was surprised at how quickly it all came together.

Not that they were completely unprepared. They'd all known they couldn't stay in London forever. There were too few of them, and too many of the infected. They all knew they were going to have to seek some other refuge eventually. 

Even before Doyle had arrived, Howard and Rob had been preparing for a getaway. First they'd knocked a hole in the garden wall and built a reinforced gate for the space so they had enough room to store a couple of vehicles securely. Then they'd found a couple of likely box vans, armoured them, tuned them up, and loaded them up with supplies and extra petrol. The vans had been sitting there for weeks now, waiting for a destination. 

Yesterday, the two of them had spent the hour before sunset creeping about UCH looking for a stretcher to use for Bodie and for a supply of lorazepam to keep him unconscious, and then they'd all got stuck in loading up what lab equipment was portable and the supplies and samples the Professor thought would survive the journey. 

Mark didn't have much of his own to pack up, just the small knapsack of clothes that had been the only thing he'd managed to keep with him since he and Rob had taken refuge in the Camden safe zone. He'd gone back to his room to retrieve it, spent a few last seconds taking in the place he'd called home with Rob the last few months, then turned his back on it forever.

He got to the vans as Rob and Doyle were loading Bodie into the back of one of them. Even though Bodie was heavily sedated, Mark could tell by looking at him that he was infected. As doped up as he was, his body should have been a boneless sprawl, but instead his limbs were tense and at slightly wrong angles, as if his body was straining against itself. Every once in a while he'd give a violent twitch as he struggled against the drugs keeping him under.

"Everything good?" Mark asked as he poked his head in the back of the van. 

"Yeah." Rob was securing the stretcher in one spot with Doyle's help. "Just finishing up here." He gave the line holding the stretcher a last tug, then made his way to the door. "You coming up front with me?"

"Yeah. Give me a minute."

Rob nodded, and then was gone. Mark could hear him walk to the front of the van and get in the cab, but he concentrated on watching Doyle.

Doyle was keeping his eyes on Bodie, and Mark could see his shoulders stiffen every time Bodie twitched. His expression was determined, but there was exhaustion behind that resolve.

"Do you want me to stay with you back here?" Mark offered. They'd thought it best that he be up front with Rob, another set of eyes to keep watch for the infected on the road. But if Doyle needed him…

"No." Doyle shook his head. "I'll be fine. I'm just tired."

Mark nodded, not willing to contradict the man if he thought he was up to being back here alone with his mate.

"You know you have to give him a dose of sedative every hour. More if he gets restless. And knock on the back of the van if anything goes wrong. We'll hear you in the cab."

"I know." Doyle's tone was irritated, as if Mark was his mum and had just told him to make sure to wear a warm enough cardigan. Not that Mark blamed him. He hated being fussed over too. 

"Right. I'm off." Mark turned to leave, but Doyle spoke.

"Does he know what's going on?" Doyle asked. The irritation was gone from his voice. In its place was an anguish that made Mark want to run. "Does he know he's turned?"

Mark nearly lied, nearly told Doyle that he didn't remember anything that happened after he turned, that it was as if it had happened to someone else. But he didn't. He'd only known Doyle for days, but he already knew the man preferred inconvenient truth over convenient lies, and that he was strong enough to handle it.

"Yeah." Mark nodded. "He'll know. It'll be like a dream. Or a nightmare. But he'll know."

"Christ," Doyle said, then he turned back to Bodie, drawing one hand lightly down the man's face before he sat back. It was a small gesture, but intimate. And coupled with what the two of them had said to each other as Bodie was turning, it made Mark suddenly need to know exactly what these two men were to each other.

"He said he loved you, back inside," Mark said, not quite knowing how to ask the question.

"And I said I love him." Doyle spoke the words without hesitation, and without taking his eyes off Bodie.

"You didn't just mean you love him like a friend, did you?"

Doyle did turn to him at that.

"No. No I didn't." Doyle's expression was calm and determined. Mark struggled not to look away, not to squirm under the sharpness of that gaze. But then the sharpness turned to something like sympathy. "You and Rob, you're the same."

It hadn't been a question, but Mark nodded anyway. 

"Look after each other up there," Doyle said, and then he turned back to Bodie, all his attention focused intently on the man secured to that stretcher, as if he'd forgotten immediately that Mark was even there.

Mark carefully shut the door of the van and made his way to the front. Rob was sitting behind the steering wheel, waiting for him, and for Howard to open the gate.

"How are our passengers?" Rob asked.

"As good as you'd expect." Mark paused, and then blurted out, "They're boyfriends, you know."

"'Course they are," Rob said, without even looking back at him, as if it were no more surprising than the fact that the sky was blue or that it frequently rained in Manchester.

"You might have told me."

"I thought it was obvious."

"Oh." It probably should have been obvious, but he clearly hadn't been paying attention. Not to that, anyway.

"How about you, Markie?" Rob leaned over and rubbed his shoulder. "You okay?"

"Yeah." Mark didn't sound convincing, even to himself.

"What's wrong?"

"Just nervous, I guess." He didn't want to burden anyone else with his worries. Not when there was so much else to worry about.

"Don't worry, we'll make it to Scotland okay."

"I'm not nervous about making it. I'm nervous about what happens when we get there." He swallowed hard. This was hard to admit. "What if they don't like the eye, Rob? What if they don't want to let me in?"

Rob didn't hesitate for an instant.

"Then we'll make them. Me and Jason and Howard. And Doyle too, I bet."

"I'm not so sure. Doyle's Mr Cowley doesn't sound like the sort you can make do anything."

"But he does sound fair. And if he's fair, he can't keep you out."

Before Mark could respond, Howard finally threw open the gate and then gave them a moving out gesture.

"Here we go," Rob said as he put the van into gear and moved it out onto the street and the great unknown.

By the time Doyle's watch showed they'd been on the road for eight hours, he'd already given Bodie nine doses of lorazepam. That was over a dose an hour, and each dose seemed to keep Bodie under for less time. He hoped they found a proper cure before they ran out of the drugs.

The van gave a lurch and began to slow. Doyle hoped it was just that they'd reached their destination, not that they'd got a flat or that they had a break down or that a horde of the infected were blocking the carriageway.

Before he could move, Rob had opened the back door of the van, and given him a nod.

"You're up, Sunshine," Rob said. 

Doyle stood, stoop-shouldered, and jumped out of the van, his whole body stiff after so long immobile at Bodie's side. He looked around, finding himself on a stretch of carriageway surrounded by farmer's fields, but with the suburbs of Glasgow visible in the distance.

He stretched, feeling his spine and shoulders pop, then made his way to the back of the other van, where Professor Orange, Mark and Howard waited for him with the van's door open.

"Are you ready?" Orange asked.

"Yeah."

Orange passed him the handset of the radio they'd brought with them. The same radio the Professor had used to broadcast the message Lily had heard. Doyle took it in hand, tweaked the frequency it was set to, and began to speak.

"Come in Dumbarton. Do you hear me Dumbarton? Come in, Dumbarton."

They'd all agreed that turning up on Cowley's patch unannounced was not the best course to take. Not with Bodie still infected. Not with only an imperfect cure to offer. So Doyle had suggested trying to contact the castle first, to warn them they were on the way.

It took ten minutes of trying a frequency, then moving up or down the dial, until he got an answer. By that time he was so used to the sound of static he almost didn't realize there was a human voice buried in it.

"Dumbarton...is Dumbarton. Come in, please." It was a girl's voice. As her words faded in and out of the static, Doyle adjusted the frequency until her voice finally popped out, utterly clear. "This is Dumbarton. We read you. Come in, please."

"Lily? Is that you?"

"Mr Doyle!" Lily sounded as excited at the sound of Doyle's voice as he felt at the sound of hers. "You're alive?"

"I'm alive."

"How about Bodie? Is Bodie there? Can I talk to him?"

"He's here, but he can't talk at the moment. Listen, Lily, could you get your aunt? I need to talk to her."

"Aunt Grace is stuck in the lab. As usual." Doyle could practically see Lily rolling her eyes. "You know how she is."

"Devoted to duty?" Doyle prodded.

"I suppose you could call it that." Close proximity to Lily and the other children at the castle had confirmed what Doyle knew from what he'd seen of his sister's children: no kid was impressed by what their relatives did. Not even if they were trying to save the world.

"Listen, Lily, I'm a bit pressed for time. Could you go get Grace? Grace, mind. Not Mr Cowley. Not yet."

"Yeah. Sorry." And with the sound of her handset hitting the table, she was gone. Five minutes later Grace's voice broke through the static.

"Ray? Is that really you?" Grace's sounded incredulous, like she hadn't believed what her niece had told her. 

"It's me. Listen, I've got a friend of yours here." Doyle looked up and handed the handset over to Professor Orange.

The man took the handset between his long fingers tentatively, as if he thought it was as delicate as spun glass. He cleared his throat several times and licked his lips nervously before he spoke.

"Grace." Orange's voice was quieter, gentler, than Doyle had heard before.

"Jason? Oh God. It _is_ you." Doyle thought it sounded suspiciously like Grace was crying, and Orange's eyes didn't look any too dry either. "Lily said she'd heard you, weeks ago now, but I couldn't quite believe it. I thought you were dead."

"I thought you were dead, too. Until your Mr Doyle turned up in London."

"Is anyone else with you? Did anyone else make it?" Grace was talking faster than he'd ever heard, as if she couldn't get the words out fast enough.

"Mark's here. And that boy Mark had started going on about."

"Rob?"

"That's him."

Doyle looked back in time to see Rob shoot Mark a look and then elbow him in the ribs, before turning back to Orange.

"Anyone else? Margaret? Eric? Jeffrey?" Doyle could hear the hope in Grace's voice, rising like a swelling wave. But Orange's words next words were the shoal that broke the wave.

"No, Grace. Just us. Well, and one other bloke. A soldier who helped us get out of Dover in one piece."

"If he helped save you lot, you thank him from me." Doyle heard her take a deep breath, and then she asked the question he'd been waiting for. "Is it true? Have you really got a cure?"

"That's why I had Doyle contact you."

"Do you or don't you?" Doyle could practically see the impatience crackling in her eyes.

"I do. And I don't."

"Jason, for Christ's sake, don't mess me about."

"The cure worked on Mark."

"Mark? Mark's infected?"

" _Was_ infected. The cure worked on him."

"But…"

"It's not working on Bodie. I think it might be something to do with your vaccine. Maybe it's mutated the virus so my antiviral no longer works."

"So Bodie did turn. I wish I'd never come up with that damned vaccine."

"The thing is, I think I can tweak the antiviral if I have access to your lab notes on the vaccine. And if I do that, I can save Bodie. And the other volunteers Doyle told me about."

"There aren't any other volunteers." Grace's voice was cold and flat, and Doyle felt his breath catch in the back of his throat. He'd known what was going to happen to them. He'd _known_. It was why he'd left the castle. But it didn't make the knowledge any easier to take.

Doyle took the handset from Jason's unresisting fingers.

"What happened, Grace?"

"Bennie turned the morning after you left. The guards shot him. Cowley shot the others himself. Said he wouldn't order anyone to do something he wasn't willing to do himself."

"Fuck," Doyle swore under his breath. "Do you think he'll let Bodie in the castle?"

"You have him sedated?"

"Sedated and restrained. He's as secure as we can make him."

"That should count for something. And it will be invaluable to have someone to test Jason's cure on."

"Talk to him, Grace. Convince him."

"I'll do what I can. When will you be here?"

"We should be at the castle gates in an hour."

"You don't give a girl much time, do you?"

"I wanted to make sure we were close enough for radio contact."

"Fair enough. I'll do what I can, Ray."

"Thanks, Grace."

"You look after them, Ray: Bodie and Jason and Mark. Outside of Lily, Jason and Mark are the nearest thing to family I've got left."

"I will, Grace. Over and out."

Doyle put down the handset and looked at the men around him. Howard's jaw was thrust out in determination, Rob was looking bolshier than ever, Jason's eyes were glistening, and Mark…Mark looked scared. As Doyle watched, Rob put his arm around Mark's shoulder and gave him a squeeze.

"They shot those people," Mark said, his eyes hidden by his glasses, his voice trembling slightly. "What'll they do to me?"

"Nothing, Markie," Rob said. "They won't do anything to you. We won't let them."

Doyle honestly hoped Rob was right, but he wasn't as sure. After all, he knew, more than anyone else, exactly what Cowley was capable of. Knew that he was willing to sacrifice anyone for the greater good. Absolutely anyone. But if he wanted to kill Mark, Cowley would have to go through Rob and Howard and Doyle himself to do it. 

He hoped it wouldn't come to that.

He hoped Grace could convince Cowley that keeping Bodie alive, and Mark, was where the greater good lay.

George Cowley was waiting on the ramparts of the castle when the two vans came into view on Castle Road. The sun had set twenty minutes before, as he and Grace were still arguing this insanity. Now the only light was provided by the last glow of the sun sitting on the edge of the horizon and the glare from the generator-powered carbon arc lamps he'd ordered set up especially for this occasion.

"Absolutely not," had been his first response when Grace had come to him. "I will allow none of the infected inside the castle's walls. I'm sure I don't have to explain to you my reasons."

"But it's Bodie."

He'd given her a look at that. It didn't matter who it was. He couldn't _let_ it matter. Bodie may have been one of his favourites--he knew that was common enough knowledge—but he'd been fond of Sally too, and look how that had turned out. He'd closed his eyes and tried not to think of what had followed Bennie's turning, of what his body had looked like, ravaged by both virus and bullet wounds, tried not to think of how he'd shot Sally and the others. He'd tried not to think of the village girl, Audrey, who'd been the bravest of them in the end. She'd stood at the bars of the cell, looked him in the eye, and told him, "Don't miss, sir. I'd rather the bullet than end up like him."

"I don't care if it's Bodie or Her Royal Highness herself. No one infected is entering this castle."

"He's sedated and restrained. He poses no danger whatsoever."

"If he's infected, he _is_ a danger."

"I know you won't be swayed by your sympathies, Mr Cowley, but consider this. Bodie represents the best test subject we have for trying out a cure."

"You said Professor Orange's cure didn't work on him."

"And we need to know why. Is it because the strain of the virus Bodie has mutated? If that’s the case, we need to find a way of fighting that strain. Is it because Jason's cure isn't always effective? We need to know that too. Without a test subject, we're shooting in the dark. And without Bodie, the only way we have of getting a test subject is to risk more people and send them out to capture someone carrying the virus."

She'd had a point, and he'd known it. Because his ultimate goal wasn't to preside over the last outpost of humanity in Great Britain, but to reclaim the whole island for the healthy. Finding a cure was as key to that goal as finding a vaccine to prevent infection in the first place.

He'd argued the point for another five minutes, not only for form's sake, but to test his reasoning against Grace's. In the end, though, he'd agreed that Professor Orange and his party would be allowed in.

"Bodie is to remain locked up in the French Prison, though. I don't want him in the main lab. I want to limit the possibility of the infection spreading. And I don't want the lad who recovered outside of the main lab."

All of which had brought him here, waiting as the vans pulled to a stop at the base of the castle's stone walls. Cowley watched from above as Jax's team converged on the vans, checking over the vehicles and their occupants. When they were satisfied, Jax looked up and gave the thumbs up sign. Only then did Cowley venture down the stairs.

By the time he reached the bottom, Doyle and the four newcomers were standing around outside the vans. Grace was hugging the smallest of the group, a young man with an even more appalling dress sense than Doyle and a pair of dark sunglasses that were suspicious in the early evening gloom.

Doyle approached him as you would a particularly unpredictable dog, one that might lick your hand one day and rip your throat out the next.

"Have you made up your mind?" Doyle asked. "About letting Bodie in?"

"Aye." There was no use in keeping Doyle in suspense. Contrary to what those around him might think, he wasn't a sadist. "I'm going to allow it. But he's to be kept in the French Prison, and under lock and key."

"Thank you, sir." Doyle shook his hand. "I know that can't have been your first choice."

"You're right there, Doyle. But Dr Edwards convinced me it was the right thing to do. For a number of reasons." He narrowed his eyes. "Though that doesn't get you off the hook for disobeying orders and incapacitating several of my men on the way out."

"I'm not apologizing for any of it." Doyle crossed his arms in front of him and looked defiant as ever.

"We'll discuss the repercussions later." He had to admit that Doyle's fire was a welcome presence, especially given how utterly shattered the man seemed. He was as skinny as he'd been when he arrived from London, which was saying a great deal, and the dark bruises under his eyes were a clear mark of sleep deprivation. But Cowley knew better than to point any of that out. "But for now, why don't you introduce me to your new friends?"

He could see that Doyle knew he was being distracted, but he still took him around to each member of the group. Professor Orange turned out to be a tall, thin man of around Doyle's age, with shrewd intelligent eyes behind a pair of round glasses. Cowley immediately approved of him. Sergeant Howard Donald, late of 2 PARA, greeted Cowley with a smart salute, a clear example of military recognizing military. Not that the man's scruffy hair and beard bore any resemblance to military grooming. He looked like he could give Doyle lessons on dishevelment. Next up was Robert Williams, a cheeky bastard if Cowley had ever seen one. Young, too. But smart, and a good man to have in a fight, both the sergeant and Doyle assured him. Last was the young man he'd seen Grace with. Grace still had an arm around him, and Cowley was interested to note that both Doyle and Mr Williams were staying protectively in the background.

"May I introduce Mark Owen," Grace said. "Jason's student and one of the most promising virologists I've ever worked with."

Owen ducked his head modestly.

"I understand you've survived being infected by the virus," Cowley said without preamble. Best to get these things out in the open, he'd always thought.

"Yes, sir," Owen said. His voice was quiet and raspy. "I've got Professor Orange to thank for that."

"So I've been told." He looked more closely at the boy. He seemed normal enough. He showed none of the twitching, none of the sudden movement that you saw in people just before they turned. There was just one small matter. "I wonder if you could remove your glasses. Just for a moment."

The boy stilled his movements and looked carefully at Cowley, then at Doyle.

"Go on then, Mark." Doyle nodded. "It'll be fine."

The boy nodded back, then removed his glasses and looked calmly at Cowley. As he'd expected, one of Owen's eyes was a ravaged blood red. The boy held Cowley's gaze very deliberately, a point in his favour. To survive what he'd done and still be calm and rational, he must be a brave one.

Cowley turned to Professor Orange.

"You're certain he has no virus left in his system?"

"Absolutely. I can show you the lab results."

"You can show them to Dr Edwards. She'll understand them. I could only smile and nod."

"I'm sure you can do more than that, Mr Cowley."

"Be that as it may, Professor, until Dr Edwards does see those results, Mr Owen is to be confined to the main lab. Once she's satisfied as to his status, we can begin integrating him into life at the castle. Is that understood?"

Mark nodded and put his glasses quickly back on.

"Then welcome to Dumbarton, gentlemen." He clapped Professor Orange on the shoulder, gave Owen what he hoped was a reassuring smile, and then turned to Doyle. "Now, Doyle, if you could lead me to Bodie, I'd like to take a look at what we're letting in to our sanctuary."

Doyle bristled slightly, but didn't respond otherwise. He just led Cowley around to the back of the second van and swung open the back door.

It took Cowley a moment to see past all of the equipment packed into the van, but then he made out the stretcher in the back, with a body secured to it with a formidable array of leather and nylon straps. As he watched, the body twitched, and a sound emerged from its throat that, after months of dealing with the infected, he was all too familiar with.

He's due for his next dose of sedative," Doyle said by way of an explanation.

"You believe Orange can save him?"

"I believe the Professor and Grace can cure him. Together."

"I hope you're right, laddie. I hope you're right." He patted Doyle on the back, and looked behind him, to where Castle Road bled into complete blackness. "But for now, let's get your friends and their equipment inside the castle walls before the infected realize we're having a tea party out here and decide to crash it."

No one outside the walls had to be told twice to move quickly, and they were all inside before any of the infected made an appearance.

Once inside, Grace took the Professor and Owen to the lab, Donald and Williams helped Jax and some of his team haul Bodie and his stretcher up to the French Prison building, with Doyle trailing behind them, and then they all got down to the serious business of finding a cure.

For the first time in he wasn't sure how long, Bodie woke up alone in his skull. There was no beast in there with him, sleeping or not, waiting for its chance to tear him to shreds. There was just him and his memories. Bloody awful memories, they were, but he'd had bloody awful memories before this. He'd survive these ones.

He tried to stretch, and found himself unable to move. The tentative sense of well-being he'd begun to feel was run over by a sense of panic. Adrenaline pumped into his blood stream and he could feel his heart pounding in his chest and his breath rasping in his throat. He opened his eyes and found himself surrounded by bricks and bars that were oddly familiar.

"Ray," he gasped out, the word hurting his throat. "Ray?"

He raised his head as much as possible and could see that he was bound to what looked like a hospital bed, and there was an IV line stuck in his arm.

"Ray!"

He needed to know where he was, if he really was back at Dumbarton, in the French Prison building. Or if he was dead after all, and this was the devil's idea of a joke.

There was the sound of movement, a door opening, and the jangling of metal, and then Doyle was there, opening the door of the cell and at his side.

"Bodie, you stupid bastard. Leave it to you to finally wake up the one time I leave the room."

"Am I alive?" Even with Doyle right here in front of him, Bodie still wasn't sure.

"'Course you're alive. Though not for lack of trying. Jason nearly thought he'd lost you a few times."

"Jason?"

"Professor Orange. Grace's friend. From London." Doyle squinted. "How much do you remember?"

He remembered London, sort of. Remembered leaving here, remembered turning, remembered a boy with one red eye, remembered lunging for Doyle. But it was all out of order, all coloured by the blood lust that had lurked in his bones and sinews, a blood lust that was blessedly gone.

"I remember. Christ, I remember." He reached out with a bound hand, and Doyle clutched at it, his palm warm in Bodie's cold grasp. 

"Oh, Bodie." He'd been thinking how calm Doyle was being about all this, but that calm shattered in an instant. Bodie had only a moment's impression of damp eyes and a twisted mouth, and then Doyle pulled from his grasp and turned away. "I'll get Jason. He'll need to check you over."

Then he was gone, and Bodie was left alone once again, with more questions than answers.

When Doyle returned the next time, he wasn't alone. He had Professor Orange with him, and a smaller man with long hair and dark glasses. _Mark_ , his memory whispered at him. _The boy with the red eye._

"We're back," Doyle said, his facade back in place. 

"How are you, Bodie?" Orange asked, as he set about doing all the sorts of things doctors usually did to check you over.

"Fine," Bodie croaked out. Then he asked the thing he wanted to know most. "How long this time? How long was I out?"

Orange didn't answer right away. He looked at Mark, and then Doyle. It was Doyle who finally spoke.

"Three weeks." His voice was flat, but Bodie knew his Ray. That flatness was hiding an abundance of emotion. "It took a week for Jason and Grace to come up with a new antiviral, and another week for the virus to clear your system. And then for the past week it's just been you lying there like a lump." The last sentence was delivered with an angry edge, but Bodie knew it wasn't anger driving Doyle. It was fear.

"Sorry," he managed. "Must've needed the nap."

"Daft pillock," Doyle said, and then clutched at his hand again. 

"I have to ask, Bodie," Orange said. "Do you still feel any trace of the virus?"

Bodie shook his head. "It's gone." He swallowed deeply. "It's all just me now."

"Good." Orange then gave Mark a nod. He began to undo the restraints on Bodie's wrist as Mark worked free the ones on his legs.

It felt so good, to not be tied down, but the freedom set a worm of worry wriggling down his neck.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" he asked as he stretched his fingers and moved his legs, the movements triggering tingling pain all through his limbs. "Are you sure I'm not dangerous?"

"Doyle told you you've been free of the virus for a week. My question was more a formality. You might as well be comfortable."

Without letting go of Doyle's hand, Bodie gradually pushed himself off the pillow with what was left of his strength, 'til he was sitting up. That was all the encouragement Doyle needed. He took Bodie in his arms and squeezed him until Bodie wasn't certain he could breathe anymore. But he wasn't going to complain. Not when Doyle and his friends had managed to bring him back from the dead not once, but twice.

"Thanks," he said, his voice getting stronger and beginning to lose its rasp. "Thanks to all of you."

He was never going to take any of this for granted again. Not breathing, not thinking, not Doyle, not life itself. And it was going to be a very long time indeed before he ever wanted to let go of Doyle.

Once he was sure the Professor had no more need of him, Mark slipped out of the French Prison. He stood outside the door of the prison, a fresh autumn breeze blowing his hair into his eyes and the late afternoon sun glittering on the Clyde, his thoughts travelling back to the day he'd woken up from the virus infection, with Rob holding his hand, and the Professor and Howard looking anxious behind him.

He needed to see Rob.

He didn't analyse the need, just started down the footpath that led to the Governor's House where he knew he'd find Rob at this time of day. Mark put his head down as he walked past a small group standing outside the Governor's House enjoying the sunny weather after a few day's rain, sidled past a woman in the main entry hall, and made his way to the dining hall. It must have been the end of a lesson, because he found Rob there, surrounded by a gaggle of girls and several boys, all of them giggling and laughing at some joke Rob had just finished telling.

No one was more surprised than Rob that he'd been drafted to help teach the kids in the castle. Or that he'd turned out to be bloody good at it. Mark hadn't been surprised at all, he was just proud of him. Howard hadn't been surprised either.

"You're just a big kid yourself, ain't ya?" He'd said when Rob had expressed amazement at how well his assignment was going. "'Course you get along with them."

"But teaching's not like playing a round of footie with them."

"You're a smart bloke, Rob. You tell him, Markie."

Mark had told him, repeatedly. And maybe Rob was beginning to believe it. He certainly looked like he'd been born to do this any time Mark happened to catch him teaching a lesson.

Not that Mark made a point of stopping by the classroom that often. He'd had the run of the castle for two weeks now, but he still wasn't comfortable walking around by himself. It was clear that everyone in the castle knew who he was, and equally clear that not everyone approved of his presence.

Mark could tell the exact moment that the kids noticed he'd entered the room. Their laughter faded, their body language got tighter, and several of them shot him nervous sideways looks. 

Not that Rob noticed any of it.

"Markie!" he said, a big grin lighting up his face. "Come and join us."

"That's okay, Rob." He stayed at the edge of the classroom. "Just thought you'd like to know that Bodie's awake."

"He is?" Grace's niece pressed forward through the throng. "Is he all right?" Lily got closer to him than any of the other kids dared. She'd always been friendly with him, from the moment he'd arrived at the castle. When he'd been stuck in the lab, she'd come by with meals for him and her aunt, and then hang around asking him questions about what they were doing. She still came by with his meals—Mark wasn't keen on eating in the Great Hall, not when he knew there were people gawking at him, and not all of them friendly—and she'd hang about, asking him about their work and helping with some of the less sensitive tests.

"Yeah. He's still weak, but the Professor is sure he'll recover."

"That's fantastic, Markie." Rob swept forward and grabbed him in a big sweeping hug. "All right, you lot. Class dismissed. I'll see you all tomorrow."

The kids broke from the room in a swell of chatter and squealing. Lily hung back for a second.

"Tell Doyle I'm glad Bodie's better," she said.

"I will." Mark gave her a smile, which she returned shyly before dashing off with her friends.

"C'mon," Rob said. Without giving him a chance to talk, he took Mark's hand and pulled him from the room. Mark wasn't sure where they were going as Rob led the way through the building's corridors, but then he headed up the back stairs and Mark knew. 

The Governor's House was a big place, but it was where most of the survivors lived and it was a crowded as a rats' warren. It was almost impossible to find any privacy within its walls. But it had only taken Rob a few days to find a small alcove at the top of the back stairs where they could grab a few minutes by themselves, and it was to that spot he took Mark now.

Once in their secret spot, Rob sat him down, took his hand, and looked at him seriously.

"Are you okay, Mark?"

 _Of course I am,_ he tried to say, but the words stuck in his throat. Not that he was sure why. Their cure had worked on Bodie, could work on others. He was safe and protected and with Rob. He should be happy, but instead he felt a disquiet he couldn't shake.

"Have I ever thanked you?" he finally asked.

"For what?" Rob looked at him, confused.

"For not giving up on me. For getting me to the Professor. For being there when I woke up." _For never looking at me like I'm a freak,_ he might have added. _For helping convince Cowley I should be allowed out of the lab. For my life. For everything._

"Fuckin' hell," was all Rob managed to blurt out, and then he took Mark in a hold so tight that it was almost painful. "What brought all this on?" he whispered, his face turned away from Mark.

"Doyle," Mark said, then took a laboured breath and tried to sort through his feelings. "I never thought about what you must have gone through when I turned. But watching Doyle with Bodie, I've realized how fucking hard it must have been."

"It wasn't so hard, Markie." Rob stroked his hair, but still kept his face turned away. "And you were only sick for a day, not nearly a month."

"But you still risked yourself for me, even having no idea if the Professor's cure would work. And you've never said anything about my eye."

"Shut the fuck up," Rob said, his gentle tone at odds with his words. "You'd have done the same for me. And you were always telling me what a genius Jay was, so I reckoned the cure had to work. And there's nothing to say about your eye. It's part of you, and I love you, and that's that."

Rob finally let go and pulled back, so Mark could see his face. He was smiling and crying at once, and Mark felt his own eyes prickle.

"You're a daft bastard, Rob," he said, even as he gave a great sniff.

"So are you, Markie."

And just like that the mood changed and they were hugging and laughing and rolling on the floor like a couple of overgrown puppies. 

Rob was alive. _He_ was alive. And somehow, all was right with the world.

After weeks of uncertainty and waiting, the news was delivered with a quiet knock on his door.

"Come in," he said without looking up from the papers in front of him, a listing of all the supplies they had to get them through the coming winter.

"George," a woman's voice said, and he looked up to find Grace standing in front of his desk, an honest, unguarded smile on her face. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen her look quite so happy. "Bodie's awake." Her smile widened. "The cure works. It really works."

"Thank God for that," he said, and threw up a prayer doing exactly that. He'd had little enough reason to thank his God for of late.

"God and Jason." Grace shot him a wink.

"And you and Mark, if we're assigning credit," he returned. A cure. He couldn't believe they'd actually managed it. "Well done, all of you."

And just like that, Cowley saw his fantasies of recovering Britain for the healthy become reality once again. Grace and Jason and their team could produce the antiviral drug. His patrols could work out a safe way of capturing the infected and curing them. They could create bigger and bigger havens free of the virus.

"You're already scheming about how you're going to save Britain, aren't you?" Grace said with a smile.

"Am I that transparent?"

"Perhaps I just know you too well." Grace headed to the door. "But before you get everyone working your grand scheme to save the world, why don't we tell them that the cure works?"

"I don't need to save the world. I'll settle for the British Isles. And I think I'll let you and Jason make that announcement. You're the heroes of the day, after all."

George Cowley was never one to reveal a weakness, but he might have done, just at that moment, as Grace came around to his side of the desk and gave him a quite unexpected hug. But he covered that weakness with his usual gruffness.

"There'll be none of that now," he said as he pushed her away.

"You're a good man," Grace said with a laugh, then she pulled him to his feet and towards the door. "Now let's go out there and tell them all we've won a battle in the war. Together."

**Epilogue**

Doyle stood on top of Dumbarton Rock, the chill air of an autumn dawn seeping into his bones. He was dressed for a patrol, head to foot in leather, with protective goggles around his neck. Looking into the town below, he strained to find any sign of the infected. But this time it wasn't fear that made him search for the infected, but hope. They weren't going to kill on this patrol, but to cure.

"I thought I might find you up here."

Doyle turned to find Bodie behind him.

Bodie looked almost the same as he'd ever done. He'd recovered the weight he'd lost during nearly a month of being infected, he looked just as handsome in his black leathers, and he had the same roguish smile he'd always had. The only difference was his eyes.

Both his eyes were the violent red of the infected. But unlike Mark, Bodie wasn't wearing dark glasses. He made no attempt to hide the signs of what he'd gone through, went to no effort to ensure other people were comfortable with his presence.

"Fuck it," he'd told Doyle, once he was well enough to realize what he looked like. "Everyone knows I've recovered. If they're bothered by the eyes, that's their problem." He'd put his arms around Doyle then. "You're the only one who matters to me," he'd whispered in Doyle's ear.

Doyle hadn't been able to manage a decent response to that. He'd only buried his face in Bodie's neck and held him tight. He didn't give a flying fuck what Bodie looked like, as long as he was alive. As long as he was healthy.

"I was just looking at the town.," he said now. "Trying to decide where we should search for a nest first." He turned back to Dumbarton, squinting into the rising sun.

"I love it when you talk tactics." Bodie put his head on his shoulder and wrapped an arm around Doyle's chest.

"You're a daft bugger." Doyle covered Bodie's hand with his own.

"But you wouldn't have me any other way."

"No, I wouldn't." It was only the truth.

The moment couldn't last of course. All too soon Bodie was pulling away.

"It's time to go, Sunshine." He shook Doyle's shoulder. "Howard's chafing at the bit, Jax is eyeing up Rob like he wants to slap him, and Mark looks like if we don't bring him someone to cure soon he's going to throw up from nerves."

"What about Grace and Jason?"

"Grace is busy trying to keep everyone happy. And you know Jason." Bodie raised an eyebrow. "He's standing around looking like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Like curing the virus is what he does every day and not some monumental breakthrough." Doyle couldn't tell if Bodie was impressed or annoyed. He thought he might be a bit of both.

"And Cowley?"

"Cowley is busy trying to look even more nonchalant than Jason. I still can't tell if they like each other."

"I don't think even they know that," Doyle said. "Let's go. Wouldn't want to keep them waiting. Not when we're waiting to deliver a monumental breakthrough." He started down the path to the Governor's House.

"You're taking the piss." Bodie fell in step beside him, where he'd always been. Where he belonged.

"Nah."

"You are. I can tell. You get that little smirk when you think you're being clever."

"But I'm always clever."

"That would explain why you've always got that little smirk."

They kept it up all the way down to the base of the Rock, and all through the day. They bantered as they captured their first infected person, and teased as they brought her back to the castle for treatment. They carried on until they fell into their cot that night, their refuge in the Magazine now filled with other sleeping bodies. But Doyle didn't let that stop him from curling around Bodie in their extra-large cot, nor from dropping a kiss on the side of his mouth.

"We're going to be all right, aren't we," Doyle said when he was sure all the others were sleeping soundly. It wasn't a question; it was an assertion, a statement of intent in the face of a universe that had lately been not only uncaring but actively malicious.

Bodie picked up on his mood, his need, as he always did.

"Yeah," he said firmly, resting his chin on Doyle's shoulder. "We're most definitely going to be all right."

"Good," said Doyle.

And then he slept.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to soundofthesurf for being my kind first reader, halotolerant for the medical consult and the whole Take That thing, m. butterfly for her always impeccable editing skills, and ancastar for producing such lovely art. Also thanks my fellow Big Bang co-mods callistosh65, draycevixen, norfolkdumping, saintvic, sc_fossil, and sineala for making the running of the challenge such a pleasure.


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